


Dangerous

by Eligh



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, non-superhero au but only sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:07:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2559140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eligh/pseuds/Eligh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint's a regular effing Robin Hood, who moonlights as being a pain in SHIELD's side. Phil's the Agent tasked with catching him. Why do things never go like they're supposed to?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dangerous

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired very, _very_ loosely by Big Data's [Dangerous](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8b4xYbEugo).

~

“What’s his name?” Clint asked, distracted as he pressed the phone closer to his ear with his shoulder. His hands were busy working the dial on the safe, and he didn’t exactly have a ton of time left before he needed to be gone.

_“Coulson.”_

Clint frowned and nudged the lock one notch over. “Coleman?”

The lock clicked and he grinned, shifting the phone to his other ear in time to catch Natasha’s annoyed _“—oul **son**. You need to get your ears checked, little bird.”_

“Don’t we all know it,” Clint agreed, yanking on the handle and swinging the safe door open on silent, smooth hinges. “Aw, yiiis. Come to daddy.”

The sigh that filtered through his cell’s tinny speaker was about a ten on the scale of ever-suffering. _“Are you **working** right now?”_

“When am I not?” Clint mused, his eyes wide and interested despite the relative tedium of this job. The douchebag he was currently in the process of cleaning out was the douchiest of all bags, he couldn’t even. “I’m a fucking criminal, Widow baby. Of course I’m working.”

Reaching into the safe, he pulled out a long, thin, round package, popped the top, and tipped out its contents before unrolling the resulting parchment with the greatest care, his gloved fingers gentle. “Is this a fucking Rembrandt?” he muttered to himself. “Of course it’s a Rembrandt, this guy is a tool.” Who the fuck would own priceless art and keep it rolled up in a safe?

_“Hawkeye I am trying to warn you of something, and could you at least do me the favor of not committing felonies while on the phone with a government agent?”_ Natasha sounded annoyed, and Clint could practically see her eyes closed in frustration, her nose pinched between her fingers. And yea, there was a point to this phone call, wasn’t there?

“Coulson,” he echoed, expert at double-tasking as he was. “I’m being hunted, of course I’m being hunted.” He re-rolled and then slipped the painting gingerly back into its tube and tucked it under his arm before he continued digging through the safe. Rembrandt wasn’t what he was being paid to retrieve, but he knew a guy who knew a guy. A little extra money never hurt. Who knew, he might actually need it someday. “Whatever, they passed my case off to someone new. Never been an issue before.”

_“Coulson’s different. He’s good,”_ Natasha cautioned, and there was a hint of respect there, just enough to give Clint a second’s worth of pause. _“Good enough that they have **me** work with him, sometimes. Hawkeye. I saw his file on you. It is extensive. He’s made far more progress than anyone before him. He was maybe only a day behind you in Milan.”_

“Well,” Clint reached deep into the back of the safe and fished around a moment; came up victorious with a manila file folder. “That’s why it’s so awesome that I have a friend in SHIELD.” He flipped it open, glanced over the contents, and smiled. Why are bad guys so effing dumb? “Seriously Widow, if I ever turn to a life of crime—”

_“You **do** live a life of crime.”_

Clint sighed and tucked the folder under his arm along with the painting, then stuffed a few stacks of bills into his pockets for good measure. Pouches, man. If there was one thing Wilson was right about—the only thing he was ever right about, actually—it was the importance of pouches. “If I ever turn to a life of exploiting the innocent, remind me never to write down my numerous felonious transgressions and store them in an easily accessible safe.”

_“Hawkeye, if you ever turned to a life of exploiting the innocent, I’d shoot you myself.”_

“Aw, baby,” Clint sighed, and shut the safe with a click, spinning the lock for good measure. “I love you, too.”

~

“The only thing going for him,” Phil muttered to the emptiness of his office, the contents of one particular file spread across his desk, “is that he hasn’t actually killed anyone that hasn’t deserved it.” Maimed a couple of the lower-rung minion-types, sure, and perhaps orchestrated events that resulted in the eventual extermination of a few more, yes. But he wasn’t sadistic, not like some of the assassins Phil’d come across in his long history at SHIELD.

The fugitive known only as Hawkeye was good at what he did, though, and had a level of scary-accuracy with a weapon and a rough enough history that meant it was, frankly, rather surprising that he hadn’t branched out further into contract killing.

Instead, he seemed mostly content with stealing various high-end valuables, only playing bounty hunter to supplement his income—not that he delivered his bounties to the authorities, oh no. He worked through proxies, because of course he did. He probably operated like that purely to spite the various agencies after him (the most recent count included two new ones in the last year alone, bringing the number clamoring for Hawkeye’s head up to eleven) and SHIELD in particular.

SHIELD, which had reached out friendly hands several times over that last few years, only to have Hawkeye laugh in their metaphorical face and disappear into the wind.

So no, Hawkeye couldn’t be a normal sort of criminal, because that would be convenient, and nothing about Hawkeye was convenient. Hell, despite the piles of paperwork the asshole generated every quarter, Phil didn’t even know what the guy looked like.

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. Phil’d been handed the file on Hawkeye a little over six months ago, and was the last in a long line of agents assigned to this particular case. To be fair, he had an excellent track record: he’d brought in Banner, he’d found Rogers, _and_ he’d apprehended that jackass Loki, so it made sense that Fury wanted him on this one. He had a knack for bringing in the ones that didn’t really want to be the bad guys.

And after reviewing the notes from the Agents-in-Charge before him, Phil was pretty damn certain that Hawkeye didn’t have a needlessly-cruel bone in his body, but it wasn’t like that conviction made his job any easier. Also, not to mince words, but this assignment wasn’t going well. Honestly, it was beginning to get embarrassing. Phil hadn’t had a case drag out for six months since he was a probie.

Unfortunately, it boiled down to the fact that there _had_ to be something for Phil to track. Give him a whiff of movement from a mark and he’d be on it like white on rice, but there hadn’t been a peep from Hawkeye’s corner in over two months, not since he’d disappeared from Osborne’s high-rise having pocketed half a mil in large bills and a fucking _Rembrandt_.

(And seriously, what kind of asshole stores a Rembrandt in a _safe_? But that was beside the point.)

There’d been the usual calling card—a handmade arrow fletched with a dappled hawk’s feather—and not a word since. The painting so far hadn’t appeared in the hands of any of SHIELD’s watched fences, but Phil would bet good money on it showing up six months down the line in _Transylvania_ or some-fucking-place, because apparently Hawkeye had contacts _everywhere_.

It was infuriating.

And a little impressive.

But mostly infuriating.

~

“Whoa whoa whoa whoa hey,” Peter said, hands up, every inch of him tense and wary. Which, given the fact that Clint was poking him in the back of his annoyingly dapper red leather duster with the tip of his arrow (just an arrow in hand; he didn’t even have his bow drawn), was entirely fair. Clint lifted his other hand to his mouth, speaking into his handy-dandy voice modulator.

“Drop the sphere,” he ordered, trying to keep the glee out of his voice. Sometimes he loved his life.

“Hey, no problem, whatever you want, man,” Peter agreed easily, and let the sphere drop to the ground. It rolled away into a corner of the vault and blinked innocently. And then Peter was half turning, his hands still raised, and Clint couldn’t fault him his balls—dude was always one to confront a problem face-to-face, and with a smirk, most likely. Clint liked his style, despite the fact that they often competed for the same marks.

His shift in stance of course awarded him a glimpse of Clint’s profile, and the tension abruptly left Peter’s shoulders. His hands dropped and he turned around the rest of the way, argument already tripping out.

“Peter Quill, you’re under arrest,” Clint said, his voice garbled and five octaves lower than normal through the modulator.

“Oh, fuck you, man, I don’t go shouting your real name all over freakin’ museums. There are cameras, _Hawkeye_ ,” Peter admonished him, but he was grinning. He tugged on Clint’s outstretched arm, capturing him in a quick but bone-crunching hug before Clint had a chance to fight him off. “Shit, you scared the hell out of me.”

As soon as Peter stepped back, still grinning, Clint shrugged and slid his arrow back into his quiver, clipping the modulator back on his belt. “I try, I try. But I couldn’t pass up an opportunity like that with you here all by your lonesome.” He paused and glanced around. “You _are_ alone, aren’t you? Gamora’s not gonna pop a cap in my ass or something, is she?” And ah, shit, he hadn’t really thought this through. “Where’s Rocket, that little ankle-biter?”

Peter laughed and walked over to retrieve the sphere, tucking it into an inner pocket of his duster after inspecting it briefly for damage. “Don’t let him hear you call him that, man. But nah, they’re pulling a heist in, uh,” he scratched his chin. “LA? I think. Maybe San Diego. Fuck if I know, but I spent the last month in Melbourne and I’m done with heat.”

“Hence the Canadian breaking and entering,” Clint observed sagely, falling into step with Peter as they left the vault.

“Hence,” Peter agreed with a roll of his eyes, drawing to a stop in front of the incapacitated guards. There were three of them, tied up firmly and securely, and he smiled easily before squatting down next to them. “Hey there, guys.” His smile was utterly friendly, and though the guards watched him warily, they didn’t appear frightened. Clint envied the guy his easy demeanor, sometimes. He own resting expression seemed to be one of permanent bitch-face, and while he could be one charming motherfucker, he always invariably scared people when he had to tie them up. Peter had none of those problems.

“So,” Peter was going on. “If anyone asks—and they’re gonna ask—tell ‘em that your datasphere was stolen by—” a dramatic pause “—Star-Lord.” He looked very pleased with himself.

Clint leaned against a pillar and rolled his eyes.

One of the guards narrowed her eyes. “Who?”

Peter deflated. “Aw, Star-Lord. Man, haven’t you heard of me? C’mon, I’ve been stealing shit like this for, like, five years.”

All three guards shook their heads, and one hesitantly volunteered, “Didn’t that guy call you Peter?”

Peter shot Clint a Look. “This is why we use codenames, man.”

“Every single government agent looking for you knows your real name,” Clint pointed out helpfully. Peter scowled, but didn’t contradict him. “Just cause I’m better at keeping my identity a secret…” Clint grinned at him. Peter pushed to his feet with a huff.

“Come on, Star-Lord,” Clint said, affecting a look of great sincerity. “Buy me a beer, since you’re the one who’s collecting on this mark.”

Peter stared at him for a moment, then sighed and pointed a finger in Clint’s face. “Fine, alright. But only ‘cause I was gonna go get myself one anyway.”

“Fair enough,” Clint said, and followed happily when Peter swept out of the building.

An hour later found the two of them giggling into pints in the back room of one of Clint’s favorite bars, a no-nonsense place where the bartender never IDed and would die before he narc’ed on any of his clientele. Clint had just finished regaling Peter with the story of his latest antics in New Mexico, and was gesturing wildly, complaining about how gullible people tended to be if you just showed up in a suit.

Peter laughed along with him, but then took a pull from his beer and arched an eyebrow. “Speaking of suits, aren’t you worried about the one on your ass? Hell, I’m surprised you’re in North America.”

Clint paused in sipping his drink and cocked his head. “You mean that SHIELD guy?”

Peter whistled low through his teeth and knocked back that rest of his beer. “Shit, I didn’t realize he was SHIELD. I just heard that you’ve got a government shadow.” He clunked his glass down and then pulled his wallet out and dropped a couple twenties on the bar. “And with that added info, don’t mind me but I’ll be going. I’m too pretty for prison.”

“Hey,” Clint protested, but Peter just shot him a smile and walked away, his obnoxious coat swishing around his calves.

~

Phil flexed his jaw in irritation. They’d been so. damn. close.

The security guards whom SHIELD agents had rescued two hours earlier had been immensely helpful. Professionals, the lot of them. It had been refreshing, really. And when they’d mentioned that the thief, one Peter Quill (Phil had sighed when Jasper’d forced out ‘Star-Lord’ on a laugh) had been making nice with a purple-masked archer?

Well, Phil was in the air two minutes later. Dumb luck had him at a summit meeting in Montreal, and he wasn’t about to pass this up.

So now he was standing in slushy snow, outside a dimly-lit bar—creatively named ‘Bar’—and listening with a dull sort of acceptance as Quartermain informed him that the patrons had said two someones—one matching the description of Quill and the other dressed in a black tac suit with purple accents, who could only have been Hawkeye—had left a mere twenty minutes ago.

Witnesses claimed that the supposed-Hawkeye hadn’t worn a mask. Apparently, he was a dark blond, and had light eyes, though there hadn’t been a consensus on the actual color. Still, it was more information on Hawkeye’s physical appearance than anyone had gathered before.

Phil turned his face up against the dark night sky and took a deep breath.

“All right, Clay, thank you,” he murmured, and then blinked. He was fairly certain he’d seen a shadow moving against the stars along the roof of the building opposite. He stepped away from the bar and down into the street, careful not to further muss his shoes in the snowy buildup in the gutter, though he kept his eyes on the far roof.

“Sir?” Quartermain asked. Phil lifted one hand to his ear, then ever so slightly twitched two fingers forward, angling his chin up. Quartermain, bless him, immediately ducked his head and muttered something into his comm. A moment later, four agents were across the street and headed to the building’s roof.

It was just ten minutes before they’d swept it totally—his men were good—and Quartermain reappeared, his face flushed red, clearly irritated.

“Well?” Phil asked. Quartermain didn’t say anything, and instead held out his hand and passed something over. Phil took it, inspecting it closely, running over its familiar shape with his leather-gloved fingers.

An arrow, fletched with hawk’s feathers.

~

_“You did **what**.”_

“I left him a calling card. Jackass secret agent man, interrupting my beer.”

_“Clint_. _”_

“Hey hey hey, I thought we’d agreed no names on the phone, _Widow_.”

_“So let me make sure I have the facts—”_

“Not even gonna apologize, are ya?”

_“—you interrupted Quill’s job, let yourself be seen by security guards, then **went and got a beer** just a few blocks away, and when SHIELD showed up, instead of just **leaving** , you made sure that Coulson—the man tasked with your arrest—had unequivocal proof that you were there. Is this correct?”_

“…Well, when you put it like that…”

_“I see. So, how interested **are** you in prison accommodations?” _

“…Shut up.”

~

“It was sloppy. I think he’s bored, or reckless, and either works for me.”

“Will either get you results?”

“Yes. If he keeps up like this, I’ll have him within a few weeks.”

“Little cocky there, aren’t ya, Cheese?”

“Maybe I’m just that good.”

“Maybe he’s lulling you into a false sense of security. You _saw_ what state Woo’s in after a year on this case. Mention arrows and he gets nauseous, and the color purple pushes his blood pressure up into dangerous territory. It’s a goddamn reflex.”

“Hm. Well fortunately, sir, I’m not Woo. I’ll catch him. It’s what I do.”

“Alright, Agent Coulson. Make me proud.”

~

After the ridiculously close call in Montreal, Clint started to get, well, not paranoid. He was too good for paranoid. Careful, though. Yes, he started to take a bit more care with where he went, and who he stole from.

He also went on the offensive, because who the fuck did this suit think he was? Clint had been providing himself with a very comfortable life by stealing shit for going on fifteen years, and now this, this, wanna-be _fed_ made it so he couldn’t stroll into a shop in New York and just _take_ what he wanted?

Which, okay. Slightly hypocritical. Whatever.

So he watched the suit.

The guy’s name was Coulson, and he was SHIELD—that much he’d got from Natasha. But a week of (honestly) only half-hearted surveillance provided him with so much more. _Coulson_ was a _Phillip_ ; he had an (in Clint’s opinion) unhealthy obsession with Captain America crap; a tiny, overpriced apartment in Manhattan; two neighbors he got along with and one he did not; a penchant for eating out or buying pre-made meals; a pretty car. He was a workaholic, single, and looked older than he probably actually was.

It was a Tuesday, at around ten at night, and Coulson had just made it home. Clint, by extension, had also just made it to his nest, a perch with a perfect sightline into Coulson’s sitting room window. He could see all of the couch—the only furniture apart from a ratty coffee table, by the way—and three-quarters of the TV. Which was nice, ‘cause apparently Clint and Coulson had similar tastes in visual entertainment.

Tonight was apparently Hoarders-night, which, fuck yea. Clint settled in, getting himself comfortable, and across the alleyway and on the other side of the wall, Coulson did the same. He had a little ritual that was remarkably Mr. Rogers-esque: first switching out his shining work shoes for a pair of well-loved slippers and then retiring his suit jacket in favor of shrugging on a faded fluffy cardigan striped in red, white, and blue. Clint was pretty sure it was a vintage Cap cardigan, one of the kinds that was super popular in the fifties or sixties or whatever.

Clint watched as Coulson kicked up his feet onto his coffee table, leaned back and drew a hand over his face, and then cracked the top of a beer. He took a slow pull before sliding his dinner toward him—it looked like plated pb&j with a side of ramen, which was roughly equivalent to what Clint had scarfed down half an hour ago.  

“Aren’t you adorkable,” Clint muttered to himself, feeling unreasonably fond for no apparent reason. He spent the rest of the night watching Coulson more than he watched the TV, and only left when Coulson slumped sideways on the couch, crashed out in exhaustion, his fugly cardigan scrunched up around his waist.

~

“I think I’m losing it, Nick,” Phil complained over questionable lasagna in the mess hall. Nick grunted, epically unconcerned, and continued to peruse his paper. Phil shook his head, undeterred by this dismissal. “No, I know it’s insane.” He poked at a bit of rubbery cheese. “I think it’s the Hawkeye case. He’s known for his sight, you know? His aim, whatever, but his _sight_. I mean, he’s _Hawkeye_.”

“Eyes of a hawk,” Nick agreed blandly. “Now you know how Woo felt.”

“I swear he’s watching me,” Phil groused, ignoring the subtle dig. The topmost layer of ‘pasta’ on his lasagna resisted his efforts to cut it with his fork.

“So buy some goddamn curtains,” Nick suggested, and turned a page of his paper.

~

Two weeks after the blackout curtains had gone up in Coulson’s windows, Clint was trailing the man in question down the street. Or, rather, Coulson was walking down the street and Clint was roof-hopping, but whatever.

He, ah, felt a little bad for the guy, actually. Coulson’s night out had clearly been meant as a date, but the guy (which was a little surprising, though Clint couldn’t explain the sudden sense of vindication when he realized Coulson’s date’s gender) had been inattentive at best, despite Coulson’s clear efforts to show him a good time.

There’d been dinner at an adorable Indian place, and a movie at an exceptional indie theater, and then an awkward moment where Clint (reading lips from six stories up) realized that Coulson had planned some sort of Christmastime look-at-the-lights/laugh-at-tourists stroll and the guy didn’t want to go.

The brusque hug Coulson was awarded before the guy climbed into a fast-retreating taxi was enough to set Clint’s skin crawling with indignation.

To be perfectly clear: Clint had not planned on following Coulson home tonight. He knew enough of the guy’s schedule to extrapolate that the night would end with him passed out on the couch, TV on. With those stupid new curtains up, Clint couldn’t exactly do his whole stalker-thing, so…

But Coulson had just looked so freaking disappointed, and now he was walking along the street toward his place, head down, hands in his pockets.

So of course, this would be the time for New York to get all stereotypical on their asses, because when Clint jumped up to the next building’s roof, Coulson was nowhere in sight. Clint frowned and backtracked a little, and oh, oh shit.

He spotted Coulson in a narrow alleyway, face to the wall, and the guy behind him was pointing something silver-ish, and that shone in reflected city lights, directly into the center of Coulson’s back.

“What the fuck,” Clint breathed, tensing all over. “Hey, no.” A quick slip down a drainpipe, a catch of his hand against a fire escape, and now he was in the alley too, but a floor up.

“It’s in my pocket, I’m just going to reach for it,” Coulson was saying, but all Clint could hear was the click of the revolver’s action being thumbed back and then his bow was in his hands.

“Hey, fuckwad,” he shouted, drawing before he thought about it, deep breath in, everything sharp and alert. “Let him go.”

The mugger jolted and looked around wildly. Coulson, however, turned his head unerringly and looked up, his eyes widening when he saw Clint standing on the fire escape.

“What—?” he had enough time to get out, but by then the mugger’d spotted Clint, too, and the gun was rising, but not turning, pointing into the back of Coulson’s skull and, shit, _shit_ —

Clint fired, his first arrow centered between the bones in the mugger’s wrist, the following four delivered with enough force to pin him through his clothes against the brick wall an inch from Coulson’s shocked face. The guy screamed in agony, but Coulson was completely ignoring his would-be assailant, already turning, reaching into his jacket for something, and ah, shit, he was probably packing.

“Hawkeye, stop,” he commanded, and Clint very nearly froze at the sheer _authority_ in this guy’s voice. Before, of course, coming to his senses and hightailing it the fuck out of there, scaling the building in three seconds flat and bolting down into an adjoining alley, zigzagging, getting the hell. out.

Because what the fuck? If he’d just let Coulson get brained, it would have been sad, yea, Clint never liked to see someone innocent get killed, but _shit_ his problems would have been over. What in the ever-loving-fuck was he thinking?

~

“He _saved_ my _life_ , Nick,” Phil said, pausing in his pacing for just a moment to lean intently across Nick’s desk, getting in his face. Nick raised one eyebrow.

“And one of my most senior agents shouldn’t have been in that position in the first place,” he pointed out, but Phil waved him away and returned to wearing a hole in the carpet.

“Not, obviously, _literally_ saved my life, I had the situation under control, but to an outside observer it certainly would have appeared that I was completely at that mugger’s mercy. But Hawkeye—who I _told you_ was watching me—showed himself and _rescued_ me, which flies in the face of everything we’ve got on him.”

“The man’s a killer and a thief, Phil,” Nick sighed, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers under his chin. “A bounty hunter. Perfect morals he does not have.”

“He didn’t even the seriously injure the mugger,” Phil almost-shouted. Nick’s other eyebrow joined the first, now a silent reprimand. Phil took a breath, and then quieter, added, “He’s not dangerous, not to us. He only targets people who—who really deserve it. He’s practically Batman. I want to make an offer again.”

“The man has shown no interest in joining our illustrious organization,” Nick said, completely ignoring Phil’s closeted geekiness, per usual. “And he _is_ dangerous. Maybe not to you, which is in my opinion a damn fine reason to keep you chasing after him, but he _has_ severely injured innocent—or mostly innocent—people before. He _has_ killed, and he often cripples his marks. An arrow in the spine is not a laughing matter, Phil.”

“The bounties he collects on are horrible men,” Phil argues, but his voice is soft.

“And he always delivers them to their enemies,” Nick adds. Phil knows he’s lost this one. The last five confirmed bounties Hawkeye had collected on had come from him dropping marks off with very bad people. Yakuza, AIM. There’d even been a Hydra contract in there.

Still, that night, when Phil got home, he pulled out a sheet of plain white printer paper and wrote a single word on it in large, black, sharpied letters. He taped it to the inside of his window, and then closed his new curtains tight.

~

_‘Thanks_.’

_‘Thanks_ ,’ the note had said, and Clint was still seething over it.

So… was Coulson teasing him? Or was he legitimately thankful? Fucking mind games, this is why Clint _hated_ spooks, they were a buncha psychoanalyzing bastards.

Clint grit his teeth and drew, released, his arrow flying true and imbedding itself in the calf of the retreating slave-trafficker he’d been tailing for the past two days. The guy screamed as he went down, but Clint was already barely paying attention, fixated on his stupid, aggravating, be-suited shadow.

Coulson could take his _‘Thanks’_ and stick it up his ass.

Coulson, who wasn’t actually in Minsk, as far as Clint could tell, but that didn’t mean that Clint wasn’t _thinking_ about him. Especially because he knew for a fact that Bucky was in town and _robbing shit that Clint should be robbing_ but because effing _Coulson_ had a bug up his ass about being _everywhere_ Clint wanted to _rob._ _things._ it meant that Clint had to take on bounties—which he _hated_ doing—if he wanted to effing _eat._

(Which was maybe an exaggeration, but he really didn’t want to break into savings, okay? It’s being saved for a reason, and mark-interrupting government assholes is not. it.)

He took a deep breath and walked over to the mark. Clint may have accidentally kicked him in his wounded leg just a little, but he was annoyed, and the guy didn’t even have that much money on his head, and he _hated_ dealing with the Bros—seriously, fuck those guys, they were the _worst_ —and now if he wanted his money he had to lug this dickbag’s skinny ass all the way across town and talk to that wheezing, O2-huffing, tracksuit-wearing _douche_ , and—

“Hawkeye, put your hands on your head.”

Clint yelled in sheer frustration even as he dived to a side alley and booked it, Coulson’s amplified voice and the sound of chopper blades fading as Clint disappeared toward his last-ditch exit, the sewer system. “You’ve gotta be fucking _kidding me_ ,” he groaned, before levering up the loose manhole, holding his breath, and dropping down.

~

Phil stopped short when he rounded the corner down the hallway to his front door.

There was something pinned to it.

He glanced around, double checking that he was alone, and then stepped cautiously closer. It’s a note, but it’s stuck to the wood with a—an arrowhead? Dear lord, SHIELD was going to have a field day with this.

“You’ve got to be _kidding me_ ,” he mumbled under his breath. “He was at my _apartment_?”

The handwriting on the note was slanted sharply to the right, and smudged a little, like the hand that wrote it had dragged over still-drying ink. Purple ink, and signed only with a sketch of an arrow.

**I was busy, you know.  
Hope you arrested the guy you stole from me, he was an ass.**

Well, this was certainly… disconcerting. It proved that Hawkeye knew where he lived, but… Phil pulled his keys from his pocket and slowly unlocked his door, careful not to touch the note at all. Hawkeye had probably been watching him for weeks. Of course he knew where Phil lived.

The inside of his apartment appeared untouched. Phil called in the cleaners anyway.

~

Clint was immensely pleased with himself, watching Coulson’s apartment entryway through binoculars from half a mile away. SHIELD was swarming—or, swarming as much as SHIELD ever did, which was with great precision and subtlety—and Coulson was standing out front, looking pissed and put-out.

Fucking served him right.

Through the binoculars, Clint observed. It was what he was good at, wasn’t it? Coulson was still wearing his coat, pulled tight against the January chill, but he’d shed his gloves and looked—sorta tired.

Which, okay. It was almost two in the morning.

Coulson was talking to the same blond-haired agent that he’d been ordering around back when Clint last saw him working in Canada, and a vaguely familiar, bald, glasses-wearing agent was stalking around, gesturing angrily and—probably—yelling. Coulson stifled a yawn.

Clint wondered what Coulson’d been up to all day. He’d followed the suit to a nondescript building that morning, and once Coulson’d disappeared inside, Clint had backtracked and dropped off the note. Coulson hadn’t returned to his apartment until nearing midnight, and then SHIELD had come, and now…

Clint wasn’t sure why he’d left the note. It was significantly more playful than he’d ever been with any of his other shadows, and this coming on the heels of the ridiculousness when he’d effing _shown_ himself to Coulson, and then almost got made by the bastard. Granted, when Coulson had seen him up close and personal it’d been dark, so Coulson probably hadn’t gotten a _great_ look, but Minsk had been broad daylight and Clint was pretty sure that Coulson was sharp enough to have at least seen _something_.

On the other hand, Clint sees _everything_ , and right now, he could see that Coulson was tired. Exhausted, really, and Clint spent more time than he probably should have focusing on the dark circles under Coulson’s eyes, the slow droop if his lashes when he blinked.

Aw, Coulson. And now Clint felt bad for fucking with the guy. Jeez, what the hell was _wrong_ with him?

~

“No, he didn’t take anything. No, there were no booby-traps. And no, no one saw him.”

_“We’ll set you up at a safe house for the night, Phil. I don’t like this shit.”_

“He’s not dangerous, Nick. I’ve told you. He’s—”

_“Shit, Phil! Listen to yourself! Why you making excuses for this jackass? You see something in him that I don’t?”_

“…I. I don’t know. But I don’t think he’d hurt me? The note was teasing, sir. Not malicious.”

_“Get your ass to a safe house. Yesterday.”_

“…Yessir.”

~

“I’m having a crisis of conscience, I need you to talk me down.”

_“Don’t shoot, oh no, please, have mercy.”_

“You know, you’re not as funny as you think you are.”

_“The soldier thinks I’m hilarious.”_

“Bucky has a screw loose, he doesn’t count.”

_“The **point** , Hawkeye?”_

“I sorta got SHIELD called out to Coulson’s place last night and so he didn’t get any sleep probably and he looked real tired to begin with and now I feel bad? Which is weird?”

_“Gods, it **does** have feelings.”_

“You’re an ass.”

_“And you’re experiencing real human emotions. Run with it, little bird. Though if you’ve fixated on Coulson, there are several less self-destructive people you could have chosen. I heard the people in Professor Xavier’s crew are all very nice.”_

“Jesus, if you try to set me up with Logan again, I will shoot you in the foot.”

~

It was dark in the back alleys of Budapest, dark enough that Phil was debating the merits of donning his night-vision goggles. He was—for the first time in weeks—not directly tracking Hawkeye, because Phil was a senior agent, and had more than one active case at a time. However, he’d received word last night that the archer seemed to be in the area as well. So if this case went smoothly, he may have to poke around and harass his favorite time-suck out of a job.

It probably wouldn’t be too difficult to do so, actually, as Hawkeye was probably hunting the same person Phil was. The bounty on Zebidiah Killgrave was absolutely ridiculous, and Clint’s patented arrow-to-the-knee approach tended to be helpful when you wanted to stop someone from far away enough away that you couldn’t hear their voice.

Phil rounded a corner, gun drawn, and sucked in a breath.

Hawkeye was on his knees, his ever-present mask pushed back, pooling around the back of his neck. His hands were pressed tight against his ears and he was staring up in abject misery at the man standing over him. Killgrave, with a slash of a terrible grin. His fingers were buried in the short, spiky strands of Hawkeye’s mussed hair.

It was the closest Phil’d ever been to him—probably the closest any agent had ever been to Hawkeye, but there was only one thought screaming through Phil’s head, and it was not anything even remotely approaching professional.

“Don’t you fucking touch him,” he snarled. “Killgrave. Hands up, step away.”

Killgrave looked up, startled and immediately furious, his fingers visibly tightening. Hawkeye cringed and tried to buck free, but to no avail. Cold fury washed down Phil’s spine. How dare this monster touch him? Hawkeye wasn’t his to _touch_.

Wait. What?

Killgrave set Phil in his sights, his expression slipping into the one Phil’d been briefed on, the one that preceded orders that were somehow impossible to ignore.

Phil didn’t hesitate. He was only fifteen feet away from them; he might not be the marksman Hawkeye was, but he was good enough that the broad expanse of Killgrave’s chest was an easy target for his stun rounds.

He watched as Killgrave crumpled to the ground, hand slipping away from Hawkeye’s head. Thank god.

There was a moment of charged silence, and then Phil found himself jogging forward, holstering his weapon ( _what the fuck was he doing?!_ ) and reaching out, offering a hand. Hawkeye blinked slowly at it, then up at Phil’s face, and then, sluggish, reached up.

Phil hauled him to his feet.

“Are you all right?”

Hawkeye blinked again, and shook his head. Not a negation, just shaking off whatever effects Killgrave’s voice had inflicted. “Fine,” he muttered, and took a breath before he focused on Phil’s face. There was a heartbeat of time where he looked relieved, but then—shock.

“Coulson?” He took a hasty step back, and Phil abruptly remembered himself. His hand drifted back down to his gun, even as he felt an irrational surge of pleasure that Hawkeye knew his name.

They stared at one another, three feet apart, and then Hawkeye swallowed.

“He sabotaged my nest, collapsed it underneath me. He was trying to get me to kill the SHIELD agents you brought with you.” His face turned stony. “I don’t kill good people, Coulson.”

“I know,” Phil told him, fighting the swell of pride. He _knew_ Hawkeye was a good man. “I know, Hawkeye.”

And then, in the space of a blink, Hawkeye spun and bolted, heading at a dead run down the alley. He didn’t even slow when he bent down and scooped up his bow, and was halfway up the wall of the building at the end of the alley before Phil even registered that he was running away.

“Wait!” he shouted, but Hawkeye didn’t listen. If anything, he moved faster.

Phil drew his gun and trained it on Hawkeye’s retreating back. He could make the shot, he could make the shot, he could make the shot—

Hawkeye disappeared onto the roof, and Phil punched out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. _Fuck_.

~

_“You’re like a cat_. _”_ For once, Natasha sounded amused. _“Leaving presents at his doorstep.”_

“Shut up,” Clint growled, but didn’t change his trajectory, slipping through the window of the neighbor opposite Phil’s—stupid man, leaving his window open, nevermind that they’re on the fifth floor. He had a Bluetooth strapped to his ear and looked like a tool, but Tasha had commanded she be in contact while he went on his ‘insane stalker run’ and he needed his hands free. “He’s out of town, right?”

_“Not due back until tomorrow morning. Tell me, is it a love note this time?”_

“Shut _up_ ,” Clint repeated. “I’d just rather not get a faceful of bullets or something if he comes home early.”

_“He won’t be home early. His plane hasn’t left. He is easily ten hours out, at best.”_ Despite her reassuring words, Natasha somehow managed to be only entirely condescending. Clint considered sniping back, remembered that, oh yea, he had an actual point to being here, and then paused in the neighbor’s entryway, peering for a moment out the peephole of his front door.

“Looks clear,” he murmured, pulling back and eying a particularly atrocious velvet clown painting that for some horrific reason commandeered a place of honor in the center of the entryway. “Sick and wrong,” he said to himself.

_“What’s sick and wrong?”_

“This painting I’m looking at.”

_“Isn’t that the place of the neighbor Coulson doesn’t like?”_

The woman was a genius. Clint reached out and upset the painting, grimacing apologetically when it fell to the ground and cracked the frame. “Oops,” he said. On the other end of the line, Natasha sniffed sympathetically.

Justice once again reasserted in the world, Clint stepped forward again, eased open the lock, and swung back the door. This was pushing it, he knew, especially after the stunt he pulled with the note pinned to Coulson’s door, but he had a legitimate reason to be here.

The USB drive he held clutched in his hand was symbolic of more things than he’d ever admit. Trust, the desire to protect, belief that the good guys sometimes needed a win, trust—and yes, he knew he said it twice. It was a big one. Though why he trusted the guy who’d been tasked with his arrest probably meant there was something wrong with his head.

Still. Coulson had, if not saved his life, then _definitely_ let him escape. That was something.

Picking Coulson’s lock wasn’t hard. Honestly, he was a little disappointed; he’d been figuring on biometric scanners or retina recognition, or maybe just good old-fashioned machine guns dropping out of the ceiling. Instead all he got was twenty seconds fiddling with his lock picks, and then a familiar, satisfying click.

And as much as Clint wanted to really nose around, no sooner than had he opened the door when Natasha sighed out an exasperated breath. _“I knew it was too easy. You just triggered a silent alarm, little bird.”_

“Aw, tripwire, no,” Clint said, looking down where his boot was caught on a near-invisible filament stretching across the threshold.

So, instead of being able to satisfy his curiosity (was the couch sagging where Coulson sat every night? What did he keep in his cupboards besides pb&j? Was his closet as full of suits as Clint imagined?) he just dropped the USB—and its accompanying note detailing its contents, which concerned an AIM plot on the lives of several senior SHIELD agents—on the entryway table in a small dish. Probably where Coulson kept his keys.

And then Hawkeye was, once again, in the wind.

~

Phil found the nest three days after he’d started looking for it. It was a _little_ jarring that it had taken him that long, especially after he realized the sightlines of his apartment this particular perch afforded. Also, while he had to resort to calming his nerves by telling himself that it had probably been long-abandoned, it was nice to have confirmation that he’d been right—Hawkeye _had_ been watching him.

There were a few subtle signs of a sniper’s nest; things Phil was only able to pick up on because of his close work with SHIELD snipers. But the certainty that the nest was definitively _Hawkeye’s_ came only when Phil found a half-fletched arrow wedged between some roofing tiles and the building’s low concrete lip.

After he spotted it, Phil spent five minutes prying it free and then stared at it for a little while, rolling the smooth shaft between the palms of his hands, thinking.

He was hyperaware of the note he’d written in the comfort of his apartment, on the off-chance that he’d turn up signs of his stalker today. It was practically burning a hole in his pocket.

Hawkeye had left notes twice; Phil was falling behind.

Slowly, so slowly that he wasn’t sure he was going to do it until he’d poked a hole through the paper and slipped the half-completed arrow through it, Phil fixed the letter into place on the roof.

“Your move,” he muttered, and climbed down.

~

Clint pressed his phone to his ear, tapping his fingers as it rang.

_“I thought we’d decided that you wouldn’t be the one to contact me_. _”_ Natasha sounded decidedly unimpressed.

“It’s a trap, isn’t it?” Clint asked, because screw formalities. “I mean, I show up and I’ll be surrounded, of course I will. He’ll have the full fucking weight of SHIELD and I’ll—”

_“Wait, what?”_ And now Tasha sounded confused. Clint furrowed his brow and looked down at the note he’d retrieved from his old nest near Coulson’s apartment.

**I just want to talk. We can meet wherever you’d like. I’ll come alone. –C**

“Coulson meeting with me?” Clint ventured. There was a heavy pause on the other end of the line.

_“He’s not cleared to do that,”_ Tasha finally said. _“In fact, the last time I checked, your status was ‘bring in using any means necessary.’ I’m pretty sure the words ‘extreme prejudice’ were bolded.”_

Clint stared at the note a little more. “Are you sure?”

Another pause. _“Well, with the spyware I’ve got installed…”_

Clint sighed. “You’re gonna get your ass arrested for treason one of these days.”

_“I wouldn’t have to do any of these things if you stopped being a criminal,”_ she pointed out. _“And anyway, you’ll just break me out of prison.”_

“Yea,” Clint said, and smiled ruefully. “Yea, I will.”

~

Phil’s day had been long, and more exhausting than he wanted to admit. _Stark_ was more exhausting than he wanted to admit, and now that SHIELD had somehow decided it was a good idea for their most annoying consultant to tag team with Banner and Rogers on defense tech… and of course Phil was the one overseeing the lot of them, because literally no one else was up for the job.

He just wanted to sit in front of his television and think about absolutely nothing for the next hour, and then sleep for maybe twelve.

He let himself into his apartment, key scraping once when he missed the lock out of sheer exhaustion, and yawned as he stepped across the threshold. The routine was familiar: shut the door behind him, drop the keys in the bowl, toe off the shoes, shrug out of and hang up the jacket… and so on.

Phil knew without looking that the contents of his kitchen were pathetic; if he was lucky, the lo mein from earlier in the week wouldn’t be moldy, but luck hadn’t especially been with him lately, so…

“Don’t move.”

Oh. Well. This certainly put even more of a damper on his night.

Phil turned to get the intruder in his sights, because he was Phil emm-effing-Coulson and wasn’t about to be given orders like that in his own home. Granted, he should have been more aware of his surroundings, but no one had ever broken in before; no one had even gotten a foot past his door without ten alarms going off. So he really couldn’t be blamed for _some_ relaxation of his usual wariness, because the fact that there was a man standing next to his couch was so far out of the realm of possibility that right now Phil could barely even comprehend it.  

The sleek line of a curved weapon glinted in the dim light seeping through Phil’s half-open curtains, and recognition pinged. He reached out and flicked on a light.

“Hello, Hawkeye.”

“Coulson.” Hawkeye looked—nervous, blinking in the sudden light. A _little_ nervous—though it could just be wariness crossed with aggravation. It was hard to tell with the mask down.

Phil gestured to his face. “You can take the mask off. I’ve seen you without it, remember?”

“I do.”

Chatty. And he made no move to slide back the mask. Phil sighed.

“Look, I’m hungry. It’s been a trying day. Are you going to let me order a pizza?”

Hawkeye appeared to consider this.

“No.”

Phil sighed again. “Well, reheated lo mein isn’t the end of the world, I suppose.” He walked to his kitchen, turning his back on the man in his living room, and opened the fridge. It was entirely empty. “What the hell.” He turned back to Hawkeye, who was now looking sheepish.

“I was hungry. You’ve made it difficult to get funds recently.”

Unimpressed, Phil narrowed his eyes. “You stole half a million dollars from Norman Osborne less than six months ago. You cannot possibly have spent all that money.”

Hawkeye’s jaw set. “I did.”

Phil blinked. “On _what_.” Except—you know, never mind. He didn’t want to know. “No, don’t answer me. Why are you here?”

“I give most of the cash I steal to charity,” Hawkeye said, ignoring his second question in favor of being nine kinds of defensive. “I needed it when I was a kid, and now I can help some other kids out. I’m not, fuckin’, eating caviar on yachts or whatever the fuck.”

Phil stared at him, and then took a breath. He was just going to go ahead and ignore that tidbit of information for now. “Look. _You_ order a pizza. And wings, or breadsticks, or whatever you want. I’ll pay for it. Let’s just get some food.”

“Fine,” Hawkeye snapped, and pulled out his phone.

~

“Delivery.” Clint listened with half an ear as the girl on the line rattled off today’s specials, keeping a wary eye on Coulson, who’d settled—slumped, really—onto his couch and leaned back, closing his eyes. “Sorry, what?”

_“Name?”_ The girl sounded annoyed.

“Um. Clint.”

On the couch, Coulson opened his eyes and looked at him, startled. Clint glared back, daring him to say something.

A minute later and the pizza and wings were successfully ordered, and then it was just two men staring uncomfortably at each other from across a tiny living room.

“I get the feeling,” Clint said slowly, “that you weren’t supposed to offer to meet me.”

Phil shrugged. “I wasn’t. But I have very good instincts. I didn’t think—I _don’t_ think—you’ll kill me.” He paused, and then added with a sharp smile, “ _Clint_.”

“Shut up,” Clint groused. “What all are you gonna get from my first name?”

“Nothing much,” Coulson said, but he was smirking the smirk of a man who could probably do anything now that he knew Clint’s name. That may have been a mistake, letting it slip. “But it’s good to put a real name to your face.”

Clint snorted disbelievingly. “How about you tell me yours?”

The smirk faded into something more real. “You’re telling me you don’t know it?”

“Oh, I know it,” Clint said flippantly. “But it’s rude to call someone by their given name unless they tell you that you can.”

Coulson huffed out a soft laugh. “Phil.”

“Alright, then. So, _Phil_. You wanted to talk?” And that was the crux of it, because what the hell was all this actually about? Weren’t they supposed to be at each other’s throats? Cat and mouse? Whatever, Clint felt off-balance, and Coulson staring at him didn’t make him feel much better.

“I did,” Coulson allowed, but slowly. “But I’m tired, and hungry. When’s the food supposed to get here?”

“Um.” Clint stuttered, abruptly thrown out of his defensive anger. “Twenty  minutes?”

“Okay,” Coulson said, and settled more firmly into the couch. He reached out and grabbed the remote, flipped on the television. “Do you want to watch something while we wait?”

“No,” Clint snapped. Yea, he did, though. Truth be told, he was tired, too.

Coulson shrugged. “Well, I’m three behind on Hell’s Kitchen, so if you don’t mind…” Ooh, Hell’s Kitchen. Clint cut his eyes to the TV with interest before he was able to stop himself, and that smirk made a reappearance on Coulson’s face. “Come on, sit down. I won’t bite. Or arrest you. At least not right now.”

“I—” Clint faltered. What was going on here? “Okay.” _Seriously_ , what. was going. on.

~

Phil had absolutely no idea what he was doing. Reality TV and pizza? With one of SHIELD’s most wanted? Seriously what. But he’d just been so tired, and Hawkeye— _Clint_ —had looked pretty damn hungry, and so they’d shared a quiet meal and watched Gordon Ramsey yell at his minions, and _now_ he was staring at a wanted fugitive sleeping on his couch.

Hawkeye had pushed back his mask sometime during the meal, and Phil was taking the opportunity to really look, something he hadn’t been able to do before. They were so close, both slumped against opposite ends of the couch, though while Phil was stretched out with his feet on the coffee table, Hawkeye had pulled his feet up and curled defensively in on himself, making his body less of a target. Phil felt a little sorry for him, and unprofessionally affectionate. Not that absolutely everything about this interaction wasn’t horribly unprofessional to begin with.

The man lying before him was a dark dirty blond, with a face that looked like it had been punched more than a few times. Not that he wasn’t attractive—jesus but he was attractive—soft mouth, strong jaw, stubbled with a couple days’ worth of beard. His arms were ridiculous. His hands were broad, and calloused, and his eyes—though Phil couldn’t see them at the moment—were blue.

For some reason, the strangest thing about all of this was that SHIELD estimates had placed Hawkeye in his mid-thirties, roughly the same as Phil himself. But this kid on his couch couldn’t be more than twenty-five.

“When did you get started in this life?” Phil asked, soft enough that Hawkeye shouldn’t have been able to hear his question. But Clint opened his eyes, instantly alert. There was a pause, during which Phil vaguely wondered how much Hawkeye’d been faking his nap.

“I was ten.”  

Phil valiantly didn’t show his surprise. So the fifteen-year-career estimate wasn’t wrong, then. “Why?” he asked, instead.

Clint shrugged and pushed himself mostly vertical, though he didn’t drop his feet back to the ground. Instead he fixed his thousand-yard stare on Phil, and Phil found himself having to fight the urge to shift uncomfortably under the force of that gaze.

“I was hungry. I needed money. My…” Clint trailed off and looked at Phil, his expression unreadable. “My brother. Was pretty useless. And we were on our own. After we ran away. From the orphanage. And then from the circus.” Every short burst of information was delivered with an almost-imperceptible wince, and Phil was suddenly in possession of a half-dozen more tidbits of background on Hawkeye than any government agent before him had been able to gather. It seemed liked tonight would be a highly informative one.

Except…

Except that when Phil went to put the rest of the pizza in the fridge, he turned his back. And when he’d turned back around? His living room was empty.

“Shit,” he said.

~

“I talked to him.”

_“You’re an idiot, little bird.”_

“Your _face_ is an idiot.”

_“Your comebacks need work.”_

“Shut up. He was nice. He fed me.”

_“You think anyone with a sandwich is nice, so forgive me if I don’t see it as such a sign of undying friendship as you want to.”_

“ _You_ gave me a sandwich. _He_ gave me pizza.”

_“You’re prevaricating.”_

“You’re annoying.”

_“And you’re going to get yourself killed. And what’s this I hear about Cape Town?”_

“They were Hydra.”

_“They were SHIELD!”_

“Hydra. Trust me on this one.”

~

“I want to bring him in. Really bring him in, not just arrest him.”

“No.”

“Nick—”

“I said _no_ , Agent. We’ve got reports of arrow’ed agents in Cape Town.”

“...Are you sure? Don’t look at me like that, it just doesn’t seem—”

“He’s escalating, Cheese. I’m five minutes away from signing a Terminate order.”

“Sir, don’t. Just. Please give me a few more weeks.”

“…One week.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll get it done. Nick. Thanks.”

~

“Are you a crazy person? I’ve been giving you the benefit of the doubt so far, but I may have been wrong in my initial assessment. So tell me honestly: am I dealing with lunacy?”

Clint looked up from the couch—Coulson’s couch—and took a slow bite of curry. He chewed while Coulson glared at him from the doorway, hand on the butt of his gun, clearly seething. Clint swallowed.

“The agents I shot were working for Hydra.”

“ _You_ work for!” Coulson exploded, then took a sharp breath, and far more calmly, said, “You have worked for Hydra.” Clint watched him with wide eyes and then slowly, very slowly, raised a cardboard takeout container.

“Chicken tandoori?”

“No I do not want your chicken tandoori,” Coulson grumbled, before heading into his kitchen. He took one long look at the contents of his fridge, and then sighed. “Yes I want your chicken tandoori.”

“Good,” Clint said, and grinned. He may have cleaned out the leftovers from Coulson’s fridge before ordering in. He wanted to make sure Coulson would eat with him, is all. Also the ‘food’ in there seemed to be teetering on the verge of spontaneous evolution.

“I should arrest you,” Coulson said as his fingers brushed Clint’s when Clint handed over the box. “In fact, you’re under arrest.” He made no move to reach for his cuffs, though, so Clint just grinned wider.

“Aw, you _like_ me, Coulson.”

Coulson shook his head, and from around a mouthful of chicken, said, “God help me, but yes I do.” He swallowed and pointed his fork at Clint. “You can’t go around shooting people. My director—”

“Your director has moles in his organization,” Clint snapped, all humor gone suddenly gone. Because moles meant that Coulson was in danger, and for some utterly _insane_ reason, that thought rankled Clint. “Why you think I shot those particular guys and left the other three? It wasn’t fuckin’ chance, Coulson. I don’t _miss_.” He looked down at his hands—the traitors to SHIELD had been about to shoot their comrades in the back. Clint sorta… changed the odds.

It was just that the thought of someone shooting Coulson in the back, someone betraying him like that… it was Not Good.

Coulson was staring at him. “They died.”

“I know.” And shit, did Clint know. Believe him, he _knew_. It’d been haunting him. He doesn’t kill, not unless there was no other way out, not unless he’s left without options, not since he’d realized he was a better man than that. “I made it fast. I always do, and it’s always a last resort.”

Coulson put down the chicken. “Look. I’m—maybe against my better judgment, I don’t think you’re particularly dangerous, at least not to people who aren’t morally corrupt. I _do_ think you’re a good man. And I think you don’t want the life you lead. SHIELD could help with that. I’ve got another asset that I work closely with—the Black Widow, you may have heard of her?”

Clint very carefully didn’t react. Coulson shook his head. “Regardless. She was a mercenary, and we brought her in, and now she’s one of my most effective agents. You’re… astounding, Clint. Your aim… I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t understand why you won’t come in. I know we’ve offered before. The only reason I was even given your file was because SHIELD doesn’t like loose ends.”

Well, that was generous of him. Clint was pretty sure SHIELD was chasing him ‘cause he made his living stealing shit from people SHIELD wanted to keep in their good graces, and shooting other people in various intricate and impossible ways. “I don’t come in because I don’t like people telling me who to shoot. It gets bloody, and I’d rather make those kind of moral calls myself.” He tried to keep it casual, letting the anger from before leech out, but something hard must have come across, maybe in his expression. He’d never been great at deception. A spy, he was not.

So Clint gauged Coulson’s reaction to this too-close-to-the-truth statement, anticipating another agent-blank-face expression, but all he got was a flicker of understanding, and then… sadness?

“You said you started this when you were ten? You had someone ordering you around then, didn’t you?” Coulson said it gingerly, like he didn’t want to tear off old scabs, but it just made Clint angry all over again.

“Of course I did!” He stood and started pacing. Coulson just watched him, stationary on the couch. “What the hell ten-year-old just up and decides, ‘hey, I think Imma rob a bank today?’ No one. No one would do that.”

Coulson cocked his head. “According to all of our records, _you_ did. And you got away afterward, too. It’s impressive.”

Clint let the silence drag out after that. He kept pacing, and Coulson just watched him impassively from the couch. He was infuriating.

“I just wanted to tell you that you’ve got moles in SHIELD, is all,” Clint said finally. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t want a job offer. I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” Coulson countered, and Clint knew he was eyeing his ragged pants, the holes in the collar of his shirt. It’d been at least a few days since his last shower, too, and he abruptly felt very out of place, and sorta stupid. It wasn’t like he was _actually_ hurting for money, but there was that feeling? He knew he had to save his nest-egg for something big. A couple missed meals wasn’t it.

Coulson reached out, offering a hand, though Clint’s agitation had placed him several feet away.

“I want to help you,” he said. Clint made a face.

“You can help me by leaving me the fuck alone.” Three seconds later he was out the window, though he somehow thought that he hadn’t needed to hurry. He bet that if he’d looked back, Coulson would have still been sitting there on that couch, just looking.

~

After the clusterfuck of that second face-to-face, Phil didn’t land any clues about Hawkeye’s specific whereabouts for over a month. Nick got agitated, but finally agreed to hold off on the Terminate order because no other agents had shown up pincushioned, and because a DC-local baddie had appeared magically on SHIELD’s front steps, hogtied with purple nylon rope, with a smiley face pinned to the lapel of his jacket, and with an arrow wound in his calf.

There hadn’t even been a blip on the security cameras.

And then fucking Al Fashir happened.

It was bad enough that Coulson ended up chasing a flippin’ maguffin through the Sudanese desert (at least it wasn’t summer yet) but then, to add insult to injury, the AIM cell he’d infiltrated had the _gall_ to shoot him, and so he was holed up in a warehouse somewhere in the city’s underbelly, bleeding heavily from his side and with no sign of exfil.

It was… disconcerting… how difficult it was becoming to hold his gun. Or to form coherent thoughts. And he was cold, which was ridiculous, because it had to be at least eighty degrees in this building.

“I just got through that winter,” he grumbled to no one, and shakily tried to push to his feet. He was wildly unsuccessful and instead collapsed in a bloody, cringing heap against the corrugated side of a shipping container, severely worsening his situation. At least before he’d been upright, but now his face was pressed into the filthy warehouse floor. It was absolutely unfair.

People—probably the men searching for him—started screaming from somewhere outside. North of his position. Or… east? Something. Left. Left of his position.

The point… the… there’s a point… the point! was that Phil noticed this, but didn’t actually _note_ it, because the events of the evening may have been getting a little fuzzy, which, again—ridiculous. He’d walked off worse than this. There was—there was that time in Juno, and that _other_ time in Kiev, and so this? This was barely a blip. Should be a blip, as long as his backup… where was his backup?

Phil was starting to shake, and his thought process narrowed a bit, focusing away from the wound in his gut and instead toward how he would kill for fucking _reliable backup_ and why was this so hard it wasn’t like Sitwell had been _doing_ anything but he’d forgive him ‘cause Jasper had excellent taste in pancakes and maybe next time Clint showed up at his apartment he could make him pancakes and then maybe he’d stay and he could let Phil touch his face run his fingers over that jaw and let him slip his quiver off his back and he could lie Clint down in his bed and take care of him and he wasn’t going to be able to do this unless his backup showed up and shit shit shit it was. not. fair.

Phil drifted.

“Sir?” Pressure against his side, someone tugging at his clothes. Phil twitched his hand, aware that one was still clutching his gun, but he wasn’t sure any movement translated. “Oh no, oh Coulson, Clint’s going to kill me, don’t you dare die—”

The voice slowly registered. “Romanov?” Phil slurred, and was rewarded with a small, relieved laugh.

“Yessir, I’m here. We’ll just get you out, hold on, I need you to press right here…” Slender, strong fingers had picked up his hand and he allowed them to guide it to his side, their joined hands slipping through slick and tacky blood, the ruins of his suit jacket. A moment later, he could feel himself pressing down, but didn’t know what he was touching. His general-torso-area had gone numb. Probably shock.

“Did you say…”

The blur of red hovering a few inches from his face said something in rapid Russian, then twisted and called something else to someone over her shoulder. Something, someone. Phil couldn’t concentrate.

The blur of red was joined by a smear of purple. “Fuck.”

Phil closed his eyes. This was surreal, he was probably hallucinating.

“…bad…”

“…O neg, we can…”

“Arrested…”

“No one… fifty miles…”

“Think… sold out?”

Something sharp jabbed into Phil’s arm, and something sharper jabbed into his side. He didn’t even have time to scream in agony before he passed out.

~

“This is a problem, little bird,” Tasha said, all while glaring at Clint from her perch just under one of the warehouse’s filthy windows. Her hair was shorter than it had been last time Clint’d seen her, cut trendily but still functionally, and she’d been wearing makeup to the meet he’d shadowed. She’d since wiped it off, but it was still weird.

Clint looked down at the unconscious SHIELD agent currently using his blood to stay alive. The bullet had been through and through, as clean a shot as a bullet could ever make, but Coulson’d still lost a lot of blood. This despite his own passable field medic skills, and Natasha’s more delicate hand.

He was pretty sure that the bullet Coulson’d been hit with had been coated in some sort of anti-coagulant. It was an AIM trick he was pretty damn familiar with, and why he always ended up washing his bullets when his AIM contracts provided the ammo. Cruel and unusual punishment was not okay with him.

Coulson’s belly wasn’t swelling with internal bleeding, though, and he was starting to get some color back in his cheeks. Good signs, but it wasn’t like they were in a hospital or anything.

“I know it’s a problem,” he told Tasha. “I’m a problem.”

“You’re not supposed to be here.” She sounded unimpressed, but Clint didn’t look up to gauge her expression. He was busy taking Coulson’s pulse and fretting.

“Well I am.” It was said much more harshly than he’d intended, and when he finally looked up in the resulting silence, Tasha was staring at him with a pensive look on her face.

“ _That_ is more of a problem,” she said pointedly, and Clint looked down to where his hand was resting over Coulson’s heart. He was just double-checking, making sure it was still beating. Really. He screwed up his face defiantly, but didn’t move his hand. Tasha cocked her head. “Forgive me, Clint. I didn’t know. I guessed, but it was more of a tease…”

Clint looked back down and finally moved his hand, though it was just to brush Coulson’s hair back from where it was mussed and blood-slicked on his forehead. His face was flecked with more blood, and ash. Just half an hour ago, Clint had watched him take down an entire battalion of AIM terrorists, methodic, one after another, aim unerring (though not as good as his own) and blank-faced even after he realized he’d been left behind.

“He’s a good man,” he said quietly. Tasha made a soft noise of agreement.

~

Phil woke to unfamiliar surroundings.

This was both surprising and not; to begin with, he hadn’t assumed any surety of ‘waking up’ in the first place, and though he wasn’t familiar with many of the safe houses in this area of the world, the room he found himself in had a definite air of SHIELD-issue. It may have been the faint but recognizable familiarity of the industrial-strength bleach-based cleanser their cleanup teams used. The anonymous bag of blood hooked to an IV in his arm was another giveaway. SHIELD really needed to stop putting their damn logo on everything.

The door opened a crack, and Phil tensed, then promptly relaxed at the sight of a familiar flame of red hair.

“Agent,” he murmured. Romanov gave him a small smile.

“Hello, sir. Glad to see you back with us.” She was, incongruously, carrying a tray bearing a glass of water and a bowl that steamed, and she slid it into place on the rickety wooden crate that served as a bedside table. It was odd enough—Romanov serving him food—that Phil frowned.

“Sitrep, Agent,” he ordered softly, and tried to sit up. His head swam enough that a sickening surge of nausea stopped his movements, and he relaxed back into the bed. He wasn’t exactly an imposing figure lying here, shirtless (a fact he just now registered) and with blood caked into a hard crust over the majority of his torso, but Romanov settled into parade rest and took a breath.

“All major AIM targets were either eliminated or taken into custody. Total casualty count was twenty-eight AIM, nine SHIELD—that I know of, at least, including yourself. No loss of life on SHIELD’s part, though the team—led by Sitwell, I believe, was forced to retreat. Their position is unknown to me; I haven’t been able to contact the helicarrier as my comm was destroyed. I was able to secure your exfil when the assigned team was forced to retreat.” She hesitated, and Phil waited. Silence was often so much more effective than questions.  “I had assistance.”

“From Hawkeye,” he said, not even bothering to make it a question. She had the good grace to look at least a touch sheepish, and something clicked. Unimpressed, Phil took a deep breath. “You know him.”

The door swung open behind her, and if possible, her face grew even stonier.

“Heya Coulson,” Clint said, and breezed into the room. Phil narrowed his eyes and pushed up a little onto his elbows. Hawkeye was still in what Phil thought of as his full battle-gear, mask in place, body armor and leather outfit smudged with desert dirt, and blood, and something immediately unidentifiable, and which Phil sincerely hoped was not brain matter.

“Clint,” he said, resigned, and completely missed the sharp look Romanov shot him. “What are you doing here?”

“Stalking you,” Clint said. Phil wasn’t exactly sure what he’d been anticipating, but that answer certainly wasn’t it. He sat up a little more.

“What? Why?”

Clint crossed the room and settled easily at the end of Coulson’s narrow bed, hitching one leg up so he could rest his elbow on it. He smiled. “Cause I was worried, baby.” He poked Phil in the leg. “You’ve got traitors.”

Phil considered this. “You’re under arrest.”

“Okay,” Clint agreed. Phil got the distinct impression that he was being mollified, and was not amused.

~

Coulson was sleeping.

“Phil,” Clint murmured. Coulson had called him ‘Clint,’ so the least he could do was start to refer to him by his first name, too. It was just polite, really. And Clint was allll about manners.

“We should go,” Tasha said directly into his ear. Clint jumped roughly five feet in the air.

“Jesus Tasha,” he gasped, holding his chest dramatically. “Wear a bell, woman.”

“Don’t push it,” she warned him. Clint grinned, and she rolled her eyes. “The Captain and Spider-Woman are meeting us here in ten, and Coulson realized we know each other. He’s out of the woods, I can’t go back to SHIELD, and we _need to go_.”

“Yea, yea.” Clint waved her off and picked up his bow, giving it the sharp jolt that activated its stealthy folding fanciness. Ankle-biter though he might be, Rocket was a good weapons developer. “Go ahead and catch a ride with them, and I’ll meet up with you in Dubai.”

“Who says we’re going to Dubai?” Natasha crossed her arms defensively.

Clint tucked his bow away in his go-bag before plopping down in one of the room’s two chairs. “You’re telling me that you’re going to meet up with Carol and Jess and _not_ go shopping? And get massages and eat terrible food and gossip like the bunch of girls you so totally are?”

“We’ll probably also shoot things,” Tasha added. “Though a massage does sound nice.”

“There ya go,” Clint said, and leaned back in the chair. Natasha contemplated him just long enough that a ping of alarm went off in Clint’s head, but by then she’d already reached out with her foot and tipped him over backward.

“I do not gossip,” she informed him, as Clint boggled up at her from the floor. There was a honk from outside and she picked up her bag. “Don’t let him actually arrest you.”

“Love you, too,” he called, but the door was already shut behind her.

~

“Where’s Clint?” Carol asked, goggles obscuring her eyes, her mohawk especially fierce, as windblown as it was. She was resting her arm on the wheel of her jeep, watching as Jessica helped Tasha strap her bag to the roof.

“Not coming,” Natasha said shortly. “He wants to play chicken with his SHIELD agent.”

“Well he can fuck right off then,” Jess said cheerfully, swinging into the seat next to Carol as Tasha clambered into the backseat. “I’ve got us a job, if we want. Apparently, some sheik has just purchased over a billion in conflict diamonds. I say we steal them and disperse the funds.”

“Well, as I’ve just found myself unemployed, that sounds magnificent,” Tasha concluded, and Carol nodded. “Let’s go play Robin Hood.”

~

Phil’s second foray into the land of consciousness was significantly more painful than the first, as whatever painkiller Romanov and Hawkeye must have scrounged up for him had apparently worn off. With a shake of his head, Phil soldiered on, pushing himself up enough to sit at the side of the bed as he contemplated his surroundings. He’d been too out of it to really take stock before.

The room he found himself in was tiny and narrow, maybe ten feet by seven, and there was only one door. The window, on the far side of the room from him, was miniscule and boarded up, allowing only cracks of sunlight through. Sunlight, though, so at least he knew it was daytime. There was nothing in the room besides the bed—which was being generous; it was more of a cot—and the crate next to it. The plate of food Romanov had brought in earlier was gone, as was the IV. There was a glass of water instead, though on principle Phil didn’t trust mystery water that he hadn’t poured himself.

Phil cleared his throat, suddenly aware of the complete and total silence that permeated the air. There was a sort of lack of pressure in the building that you only find when you’re completely alone, and he realized that Romanov and Clint must have left. Probably had done as soon as they realized he wouldn’t die, and he certainly didn’t blame them.

It took an aggravatingly long amount of time to convince his legs to support his weight, and then even longer to stagger to the door and swing it open. He was missing his gun, felt naked without it, somehow more naked than his literal half-nudity (because they wouldn’t leave him a shirt, oh no) and—

The connecting room was a bit more cluttered than the bedroom, if you counted a simple wooden table, pair of chairs, and set of shelves as cluttered. There was another, slightly larger, boarded-up window, and two more doors, too—one leading outside, and the other propped half-open to reveal a simple toilet.

It was the items on the table that had given Phil pause. His gun and holster, both perfectly clean and set out neatly next to a pair of slacks, a collared shirt, and some underclothing. There was also another glass of water, a clean bowl, a can of peaches with a pop top, and a slip of paper.

Phil limped over and picked up the paper.

**Recon. I’ll be back, so don’t shoot me when I come in.**

It was signed with a scribble of a bulls-eye, and Phil irrationally felt more optimistic. Which, no. He just needed to arrest Hawkeye and be done with it.

But for now… those peaches looked extraordinarily good. And he was very thirsty. And really, if Clint had wanted to kill him, he would have had ample time by now, so it seemed unlikely that he’d have poisoned anything he’d laid out for Phil to eat.

Mind made up, Phil sank gratefully into one of the chairs and pulled the peaches closer. He was halfway through his makeshift meal (having chosen to just eat directly from the can in favor of dirtying the bowl) and was taking a drink of the water when the front door swung open and Clint walked in, whistling, and with a canvas bag slung over his shoulder.

“Oh, hey, you’re up,” Clint said brightly. He dropped the bag next to the table and plopped into the other chair. “How’re you feeling?”

Phil swallowed his mouthful of peach and fixed Clint with a bland look. “How long was Ms Romanov spying on SHIELD for you?”

Clint smirked. “How long was she working for SHIELD?”

“Five year…” Phil started to say, and at Clint’s pointed look, trailed off. “The _entire_ time? Really?”

“She wouldn’t have even taken the position if I hadn’t harassed her about it,” Clint said, and bent down to ruffle through the bag. He emerged with a loaf of dark brown bread and a couple small potatoes, which he promptly started slicing up with a knife he pulled off his belt. “How’s your side, Phil?”

“I can’t believe she was a traitor,” Phil lamented, and Clint looked up sharply. He thunked the knife point-down into the table and leaned forward, his face hard.

“Natasha is not a traitor. She would never endanger anyone, and she never fed me information that would have helped me steal anything, or find someone, or do much of anything. She helped keep me from getting caught, and that is all. I promise you. She’s the most loyal person I’ve ever met, and if you go after her for this, whatever truce we’ve got going isn’t going to mean shit anymore, Coulson.”

Phil blinked, and then nodded once before going back to his peaches. Clint unstuck his knife and glared down at his potatoes, though his movements chopping them were exactly as unhurried as before. They sat in an awkward silence for a moment.

“My side feels better,” Phil said to break the tension, and Clint looked up. Phil cleared his throat. “Whatever painkillers you’ve given me are working enough, though they’re wearing off a bit right now, and, am I correct in my memory that you gave me your blood?”

“I did,” Clint told him, and stood, cradling a double handful of potatoes. He dumped them into a pan from one of the shelves, and then flicked on what appeared to be a hotplate and positioned the pan over it.

“Thank you,” Phil said quietly. “I’m sure I would have died if you hadn’t done that.”

“The bullet was through-and-through, but gut wounds bleed,” Clint said mildly as the potatoes started to sizzle. “Tasha stitched you up when we got here, I gave you maybe a pint and a half. You woulda been fine, Coulson.”

Phil hmm’ed non-committedly. “Where’s ‘here’?”

“A safe house of my own design,” Clint not-answered. “It’s not SHIELD-affiliated, though SHIELD did very graciously stock it.”

“I’m sure they’re aware of their contribution,” Phil said dryly, and Clint shot him a grin over his shoulder.

“Leave me some ‘a that fruit. You can share my potatoes and bread.”

Phil pointedly fished out another slice of peach and sucked it into his mouth.

~

Turned out that Phil was entertaining as fuck, even when he was mostly immobile. Perhaps it was _because_ he was mostly immobile, and so was reduced to making wry observations about Clint’s general, well, _everything_. Seriously, name an action—changing one’s bandage, making breakfast, taking one’s shower, tying one’s shoes… Phil had a comment about Clint’s first-aid technique, his pancake flipping, his excessive water usage, his inefficient bow-tying.

It may—just maybe—have been the meds, because Phil reassured him several times that he was rarely this talkative. Usually before going into a diatribe about the sheer waste of gun oil during the cleaning of Clint’s guns. And then arresting him again. (Current count was up to nine, though Phil hadn’t tried to follow through so far, so, a win in Clint’s book.)

And well, yea, Clint had sorta got a feel for his usual subdued emotional range (specializing in shades of annoyance and concern) during the couple times he’d invaded Phil’s apartment, but his deadpan certainly wasn’t in full force now, which was pretty friggin’ hilarious. Or at least, it wasn’t around until the last couple days at Clint’s safe house, during which Phil stopped taking the morphine Clint’d scored from a local buddy.

And then, if anything, when Phil turned the blank-faced agent façade up to compensate from his shameful _emoting_ all over the damn place for the previous four days, Clint was even more amused. Hell, the man could keep a straight face through literally any shit that Clint pulled, which at one point included grievous property damage, and which totally wasn’t Clint’s fault, because Clint’d just been _bored_ and Phil’d shooed him out so ‘he could take a damn shower without your help, _Hawkeye_.’

And then the roof had called—because of… surveillance?... reasons? Sure. But then there’d been a stray bit of moldy thatch that Clint hadn’t spotted in time, and then there was the whole ordeal of falling _through_ the roof, and obviously the moldy bit would have been over the bathroom bit, and so Clint _may_ have gotten an eyeful of a naked and wet SHIELD agent, who’d appeared very unimpressed by this whole state of affairs, but Clint couldn’t be sure because for some insane reason he was blushing so hard that he felt faint.

~

“Clint?” Phil called, dragging himself back to consciousness only reluctantly. He shouldn’t have been sleeping as hard as he had been, but Clint just _exuded_ a feeling of competency, and had shown a great deal of concern for Phil’s well-being, and so, well—

Phil hadn’t managed to get this much restful sleep in years.

He winced a little at the throb in his side when he swung his legs down from the bed, and reached out, finding the ibuprofen and glass of water in place as always. “Clint,” he called out again, and popped the pills into his mouth. “Are you awake yet?” Clint had developed a habit of napping on the hard chairs in the other room, keeping a nominal watch and insisting that Phil sleep every night on the cot.

With a sigh, Phil leaned over, preparing himself to lever to his feet, and that was when he saw it. A slip of paper; he must have knocked it off the table when he grabbed the pills. Phil bent over, wincing, and picked it up.

**PHIL!**  
I regret that our time in this lovely city must be cut short. My life of crime and excitement calls, though I shall miss the dulcet tone of your voice, and your not-at-all adorable snoring, and your oh-so-helpful criticisms of my person. SHIELD will be along to pick you up shortly.  
Kisses, snookums.  
Clint.  

Phil blinked at the note, and was in fact still sitting on the cot and staring at it, when the front door to the house swung open and what sounded like an entire battalion of extraction team stormed the place.

“We’re clear!” Jasper shouted.

“Phil?” Quartermain, and he sounded worried.

“In here,” Phil said faintly. He shoved the note in his pocket and watched, half-amused, as Clay kicked open the bedroom door. His face was white, and he was carrying a med bag.

“Oh thank jesus,” he breathed. “We were half expecting to find your fuckin’ body, sir.”

“Hawkeye took surprisingly good care of me,” Phil told him, but that just caused Clay to blanch further. From the other room, Jasper’s voice took on a bit of a shrill note.

“Did he fucking just say fucking _Hawkeye_?”

Phil shrugged, and then winced again.

~

Clint’s fingers and toes were so far past numb that the null-feeling had spread to his elbows and knees. Days ago, he’d pointed out to his captors that if his fingers fell off, he couldn’t exactly be of any use to them, but Minion #3 had just snarled, Minion #2 had laughed, and Minion #1 had cuffed him upside his already-concussed head. Apparently his wit and powers of persuasion were lost on lesser minds.

He’d been in Hydra’s custody for two weeks, if he was counting his days correctly, and knew perfectly well that he’d never really had any chance of rescue. It was shitty. _Everything_ was shitty; he was hungry and tired and cold, and he missed Natasha, who was probably getting all frantic over him, huge sap that she was. She was probably to the point of stoically glaring at maps, or narrowing her eyes aggressively at computer screens, or possibly some light minion-torture. _Shit_ , he missed Natasha.

He also missed Phil. This was not entirely surprising, because he’d spent a good month after they’d parted ways taking on jobs that fed directly into SHIELD’s interests, and staying away from the more inflammatory marks. But then this cluster with Hydra happened, and he’d been snatched up, and now… well. He had no desire to ever come back to Antarctica, he could tell you that.

It was sometime a couple hours past dark o’clock when Clint heard a muffled explosion. He was busy being curled into a ball and breathing shallowly on his hands, blinking away blood courtesy of his latest discussion with whats-his-face, Hydra asshole #29 or whatever, creepy fuck with the little round pretentious glasses.

“Tasha I love you,” he whispered when a second explosion sounded, this one much closer. Dust drifted down from the ceiling of his cell, and Clint shakily pushed himself up into a crouch.

His door rattled. “Anyone in there?” The voice wasn’t one he recognized, though he was clear enough to register that it belonged to woman.

“Yea,” he rasped out. “Lemme out?”

“Step back,” Mystery-Woman ordered. Clint turned a little to the side and protected his head. There was a clunk, a pause, and then a bang, and when Clint looked up, the door was hanging from one hinge and Mystery-Woman was holding out her hand.

“Can you move?”

“Sorta?” Clint guessed, unfolding himself and standing on shaky legs. The woman, who appeared to be mid-thirties and of apparent Chinese descent—and who looked spectacular in a leather uniform and freaking _heels_ , b-t-dubs—watched him for a moment before disappearing to the left, where Clint heard her repeating her queries to other doors in the dungeon. Freaking dungeon. Hydra asshole dramatics.

Clint staggered to the (slightly smoking) doorway and leaned out. “Who sent you?” he asked, and the woman paused in fitting an explosive to the door three down from his to arch her eyebrow at him.

“SHIELD. Stay where you are, sir, we’ll have a team down shortly to help you out.”

Clint nodded, his eyes wide. Well, shit. “Okay.” And when the woman went back to blowing shit up, he slipped from the cell and sidled in the opposite direction.

And promptly ran directly into Phil Coulson.

“Clint,” he said, surprised, and steadied Clint with heavy hands on his shoulders when Clint nearly fell over backwards. “What are you doing here?” He looked around, apparently confused. “Were you following me again?” Clint’s body chose that moment to begin to uncontrollably shiver, and Phil’s eyes sharpened, taking in his ragged appearance. “Were they holding you?”

“Maybe a little,” Clint told him through chattering teeth, and tried not to sag against him when Coulson’s hands tightened around his shoulders. “They wanted me to shoot a guy, and I disagreed.”

“Are you all right?” Phil’s voice was soft. Clint started to nod, but then thought better of it, thought of giving Phil his blood, and of Phil’s pale face flecked with sweat and the viscera of ambush. He shook his head, instead.

“I’m not good.” His knees buckled a little, proving his point. “’m hungry, and my hands…” he held up his fingers for Phil’s inspection, and Phil’s eyes widened when he saw their blue tint. Clint took a breath. “Please don’t arrest me,” he whispered. “Please, Phil.”

Phil stared at him. “Clint—”

“Sir?” The woman was back and standing a few feet away. “The med team’s five minutes out.” She gave Clint an unimpressed side-eye. “Do you know him, sir?”

“He’s…” Phil started to say. Clint turned on his best pleading eyes, and Phil faltered. The woman’s eyes narrowed.

“Sir?”

“He’s an informant I’ve worked with before,” Phil said finally, and Clint released a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “Sit down, Clint. Our med team will see to you, and I’ll be back to talk to you later.” He let go of one of Clint’s shoulders (Clint absolutely did not immediately miss the pressure of his touch) and reached into one of his pockets—he was wearing a grey parka, the lucky bastard—and pulled out a heat pack. “Here,” he said. “For your hands.”

“Thanks,” Clint told him. Phil nodded once before guiding Clint to lean against the wall, and continued on down the hall, head in close to Mystery-Woman’s and talking fast in a low voice. Clint sunk to a crouch and tried to calm down a little.

He’d managed to curtail his initial panic by the time the medics had bandaged him up a little and given him a few more heat packs, but Phil’s set face upon his return half an hour later wasn’t really helping the whole ‘calm down’ situation.

“I have to take you in,” Phil said. Clint blanched.

“No, no, you don’t, you can just let me—”

“Let you _what_ ,” Phil snapped. “We’re in _Antarctica_ , Clint. What was your grand escape plan?”

“Steal back my bow, shoot a couple guys, hotwire a plane?” Clint offered weakly. Phil glared at him.

“It’s one thing for me to not take action when you ambush my apartment, or kidnap me to a safe house, but—”

“Kidnap?” Clint asked, half-outraged, half acting the part. “I did not _kidnap_ anyone.”

Phil clenched his jaw. “—But it’s another thing to let you steal a plane from a hostile base my agency _just took_ , Clint. I can’t fudge this one.”

“But no one knows what I look like, right,” Clint asked, thinking fast. “I’m an informant, that’s all, just some guy—”

“ _Clint_.” Coulson said forcefully. “Don’t ask me to do this. I can’t, I’m sorry. You know I—I like you, Hawkeye.” He shook his head. “But this needs to stop. We’re not—we’re not friends. I have to do this.”

“Aw, Coulson, no,” Clint muttered, but didn’t resist when Phil slipped handcuffs around his wrists, snapping them tight enough that Clint wouldn’t risk his fingers to get out. Damn it.

~

Phil felt like shit.

The look on Clint’s face when he had clicked his cuffs around Clint’s wrists… well. Phil would not forget that for a long while.

And now Clint was sitting in a cell in the bowels of a SHIELD facility in New York, flown direct and under heavy guard from Antarctica. He’d been booked, photographed, fingerprinted, and was awaiting transfer to the Fridge.

Through it all, Phil had sat at his desk, calmly filling out the closed-case paperwork, nodding at his coworkers’ praises, answering his phone, and delivering his mission summation report in person to Nick. He had not been down to the cells. He had not looked at the security feed. He couldn’t.

But now the paperwork was done, the coworkers were gone, the phone was silent, and Nick had smiled and told him that it had been a job well done, leaving Phil alone with nothing but his own vaguely accusatory feelings of betrayal.

He reached out and flicked on his computer monitor, typed in a quick series of codes, and the video feed he’d been avoiding all day popped up.

Clint was sitting on the edge of his bunk, his hands folded and hanging between his knees. He was dressed in a grey jumpsuit with matching grey slippers, and was staring directly at the camera. There was nothing of his usual good humor anywhere in his expression. And for the first time in their acquaintance, Phil was confronted with a man who felt… alien.

This Clint wasn’t the man who’d teased Phil, or watched reality TV on his couch, or even maybe flirted with him. This wasn’t the man whose life he’d saved on the streets of Budapest, or who’d given him blood in Al Fashir, or who’d cringed when the Phil’s cuffs clicked home around his wrists. The man sitting in SHIELD detention block A was, for lack of a better term, dangerous.

Unconsciously, Phil’s hand tightened on his mouse. The feelings of guilt and unease redoubled.

He only let himself watch for another thirty seconds, and when a quick scan of the past few hours of surveillance made it clear that Clint wasn’t going to move from that one position, Phil minimized the screen and forced himself to go home.

~

“It was nice of them to bring you back to America,” Tasha said, her head appearing upside down from the vent outside Clint’s cell.

“Yea,” Clint agreed, standing and relaxed against the metal rails, his hands dangling over the crossbar. “Saved me a bunch on plane fuel. You know how expensive it is to fly a fuckin’ quinjet?”

“Intimately,” Tasha muttered, flipping down and taking about three seconds to fiddle with the lock before Clint’s door was swinging open. “Which reminds me: you’re paying me back, little bird. If you ditch this bill, so help me…”

“Aw, Tasha,” Clint sighed, clutching his heart. “You wound my honor.”

“You have no honor,” she snarked. Clint gasped, and laced his fingers together, giving her a leg up back into the ceiling.

["You spell honor like a brit!”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZccIAg_N2Q) he retorted, and was shushed for his efforts. A moment later, the walkway outside his cell was abandoned.

~

Clint had been missing from SHIELD containment for twelve hours before anyone noticed, and Phil was quite possibly the only person not surprised by this. Personally, he felt it was a major lapse in the training of his agents; of _course_ Clint had escaped, and of _course_ he’d been helped by the Black Widow. Their relationship was all there in black and white in his report from Sudan. Escape was the only logical conclusion to the incarceration of either.

“At least we have his prints,” he told Nick. “And we know his full name.” The note of pleading in his voice was highly unprofessional, but somehow he couldn’t help it.

“I bet he would have told you his name if you just asked him.” Nick was being his usual overdramatic self, standing silhouetted against the floor-to-ceiling windows, at parade rest, in his ridiculous leather duster. He didn’t look at Phil when he addressed him, but Phil was used to the pretension. Nick had a reputation to maintain, after all.

“I’ll find him,” he assured, ignoring the implications of Nick’s statement.

Nick sighed. “This is getting ridiculous. He injured three agents when he busted his ass out of here.”

Phil reached out and straightened a pen on Nick’s desk. “I agree, sir. Hawkeye—”

“No,” Nick interrupted. “I do not think you agree. I think you’ve been compromised by the biggest pain in SHIELD’s ass in the last fifty years.” He finally turned to face Phil, who had to fight against ducking his head, embarrassed.

“I assure you, sir, I—”

“You’ll assure me of nothing, Agent Coulson.” A muscle ticked in Phil’s jaw. Nick never addressed him by title unless Phil had really fucked up. Apparently this was one of those times.

Nick sighed. “I’m signing a Terminate order.”

“No,” Phil protested immediately, shaking his head. “Sir, I can still—”

Nick circled to his desk and leaned over it, pressing his hands flat, his good eye boring into Phil’s. “That is enough, Agent. I’ve given you more leeway on this assignment than I give _any_ one, _ever._ Hawkeye is a danger to this organization and its agents, and so I’m done. The order is signed. Now, are you going to be able to complete it, or am I going to have to give this assignment to Garrett?”

Phil swallowed past the rock in his throat. “I’ll take care of it, sir.”

“See that you fucking well do,” Nick growled, and sank into his chair.

~

They were in a safe house, a place in upper New York that Tasha had kept mostly out of habit. She was sitting at the kitchen table, perfectly composed as always, and intent on cleaning her weapons because as she’d pointed out, SHIELD wasn’t exactly going to sit on their asses and just let escaped prisoners go.

Clint was, also as always, nowhere near her levels of calm, though his current agitation was out of character even for him: pacing, grumbling under his breath, even occasionally gesturing in an invisible argument. He was heavily armed himself, already having sped through cleaning and checking two handguns, a set of throwing knives, and his favorite bow.

“Sit down before I shoot you,” Natasha said after roughly twenty minutes of his distress, though she didn’t divert any of her laser focus away from the .45 in front of her. Clint glared in response. Tasha and her perfect calm and her perfect hair and her perfect tac suit.

Because Tasha didn’t keep a change of men’s clothing at her safe house, _Clint_ was still wearing the SHIELD-issued prison jumpsuit, though he’d at least exchanged the slippers for a pair of unlaced, too-large combat boots that he’d stolen from someone’s backyard a few miles away. His hair was wild from where he’d been running his hands through it, and he looked the very picture of escaped convict.

“I just can’t believe that he arrested me.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Of course he arrested you. He’s been arresting you every time he’s seen you for months.”

“But not _actually_ —”

“Clint.” Natasha’s voice was steel, and her eyes friggin’ adamantium. Clint cringed a little, abruptly reminded that his best friend though she may be, Natasha Romanov was one frightening person.

Taking a breath, Natasha carefully laid her half-disassembled gun on the table and turned her full attention on him. “You are being an idiot.”

Clint frowned. “Hey…”

She held up a hand. “No. I am _finished_ with this. You know, I _liked_ SHIELD. You may not have gotten it through your thick skull during all the times I intimated it, but they are good people. Better than most agencies like them. And while I believe you that they have their bad seeds, Director Fury, and A.D. Hill, and your Coulson? They are not the enemy. They would not abuse you. They are not your father, they are not Barney, and they are not Trick.”

Clint cringed again. “I never said…”

“You don’t want to take orders that you disagree with,” she interrupted, “and I understand that. But at SHIELD, I have never once been issued an order I disagreed with, and then was forced to carry out. Perhaps I’ve been lucky, but—” and here she looked slightly sad. “They’ve helped me balance my past, Clint. You understand my need to do that.

“And you know, too, that if you make your living as a killer for long enough, your morals will slip. You’ve accepted hits from _Hydra_ , Clint. The same organization that has tortured and killed countless people, tortured and imprisoned _you_ —they are literally _Nazis_.” She blew out an exasperated breath. “I never understood your refusal to listen to SHIELD’s offer. But now it’s too late.”

“I’ve been fine by myself,” Clint said, his hackles rising defensively. “It’s not always great, but…”

“It is _always_ not great!” Natasha exclaimed. “You are on the run, you are forced to lie, your only friends are thieves and conmen and murderers and no one understands the rush more than I do, Clint! But I am _tired_ of this defensive life. And someday, if we… we will be caught eventually, and maybe even very soon. Our friends will be caught. And if we are lucky, we will live out the rest of our lives in a maximum security prison. If we are unlucky…” She didn’t finish the rest of the thought. She didn’t need to.

Clint looked down at the ground. He couldn’t meet Tasha’s eyes right now. She was right. She’d had a good life with SHIELD, a _normal_ life. And he’d fucked it all up, teasing Coulson, playing games. If he’d just _listened_ …

“Go and…” Tasha said after a moment. “Go get the spare guns from the bedroom. We need to be prepared for when they come after us.”

“Yea,” Clint agreed. “Okay.”

~

Clint had successfully evaded him for two weeks, which was saying something, really. Now that SHIELD had his prints, and knew his face, and had flagged his name, it really just a matter of time.

Time that was, apparently, up. Phil’d been separated from his team maybe twenty minutes ago, but that didn’t mean that he’d lost Clint’s trail. He rounded the corner of the sprawling compound he’d tracked Clint to, a spot of human interference in the middle of the Mojave, and raised his gun.

“Stop right there,” he ordered. Clint froze just five feet away, blood seeping from the graze in his thigh that Phil’d inflicted ten minutes ago. He turned around, his hands half-raised, and smiled.

“Hey, Phil.”

Phil’s finger tightened slightly on the trigger, almost past the threshold. _Terminate, terminate_ , **_shit_. **

“Ya gonna shoot me, Phil?” Clint asked, his grin faltering a little. “SHIELD’s got it out for me that bad?”

Phil lowered his gun, and after a pause, holstered it. “Damnit, Clint. I’m supposed to kill you. You should’ve—”

“Listened to your job offer?” Clint finished for him, quiet. He took a step closer, limping a little. “I know. Tasha told me… I’ve been dumb, but it’s too late now, isn’t it?”

Phil nodded slowly and took a step closer himself. “Even if I bring you in, there’s no guarantee that they wouldn’t shoot you on sight. And if I don’t… follow through… now, I’m going to be taken off your case after this—you compromised me, you jackass.” Another step. “And there’s no way I can do it.”

Clint’s grin grew. “Maybe that was my fiendish plan all along.”

“Maybe.” They were close now, close enough that Phil could reach out and touch if he wanted. Phil searched Clint’s face. “Maybe being compromised isn’t the end of the world.”

Clint made a soft noise of agreement, and then reached out where Phil couldn’t, cupping Phil’s neck with the palm of one dirty hand. “Phil…”

“Fuck,” Phil swore, and then pushed against Clint’s shoulders, rounding them sideways and against the wall of the compound. He didn’t kiss him, but he pressed them together, the bones in his forehead digging painfully against Clint’s.

Clint, who dropped his bow in favor of clutching his hands tight in the lapels of Phil’s suit, who breathed hot over his face and angled his lips so that when they opened they would brush Phil’s left cheekbone, who closed his eyes and whispered, “I want you. You gotta know that.”

“I’m going to be court-martialed,” Phil muttered, but didn’t pull away. Clint laughed into his face and backed off for the both of them, tipping his head to rest against the wall of the compound and give him an angle for which to meet Phil’s eyes.

“If you’re going to let me go, I need to run,” he said, honest, and slid his hands in hot and firm lines up and down Phil’s chest. He hesitated, those blue eyes still searching Phil’s. “You could come with me.”

Phil, for once, was utterly floored. “What?”

Clint pulled away a little more, though he kept his hands solid on Phil’s body. “You are fascinating, Phil Coulson. I want to know everything about you, and I can’t really do that if SHIELD shoots me in the head. And you can’t chase me forever, you said so yourself.”

“I’ll—I can’t—I—” Phil stammered. He was completely at a loss. There were so many scenarios he’d imagined: Clint proving his worth to Nick by saving a team was one of the reoccurring ones, though ‘a team’ had occasionally been replaced with ‘some puppies.’ ‘Generic maligned group’ or ‘bus-full of the elderly’ worked, too. Or, Clint could steal them some useful information, or bring in a big bounty, or just walk into SHIELD and somehow be forgiven his sins.

At no point had Phil considered the opposite situation. Going with Clint, running, the two of them together…

“Look,” Clint said, once it became clear to both of them that Phil had no idea what he was going to say. “I think we both know that I need to go. So here’s what’s gonna happen: I’m gonna go ahead and trust you, Phil, and tell you where I’m gonna be tomorrow at sunset, because fledgling relationships should come from a place of trust.” He grinned and laughed a little at himself, while Phil narrowed his eyes, not amused. Clint sobered a little, though he was still smiling. “So, if you want to see where this is going, meet me there. If not,” he shrugged, “then please don’t come in guns blazing. I’ll wait for an hour.”

The location was an easy one to remember, and Clint’s eyes were very very blue, and utterly honest, and Phil stayed frozen when Clint leaned in and brushed a soft kiss over his cheek. And then Phil watched him go, his fingers of one hand resting lightly on the spot where Clint’s lips had lingered, his mind reeling.

~

“I have conditions,” Phil said, entirely unfazed when Clint dropped from the ceiling, though he did aim his weapon, with the safety off. Clint raised his eyebrows, listening, squashing the hot surge of desire he felt in the face of Phil’s unflappability. Something about a guy that didn’t have any problem drawing on him, and he wasn’t going to forget the throb across his thigh from their little confrontation yesterday… he may have some issues.

“Over the next months,” Phil said, “we prove to SHIELD that we, as a team, are good men. That I’m a good influence on you, that you can be trusted to take out of the people who deserve it, and deliver them to the people who can try them fairly. And no more larceny.” Phil waited then, gun still trained on Clint’s torso, his face set and stony.

“What’ll you do if I say no?” Clint asked, ‘cause sometimes he was a little shit.

Phil raised an eyebrow. “I will shoot you in the knee and drag you into SHIELD, and hopefully I will be able to talk Nick into not having you executed.”

Clint inclined his head. He got the feeling that Phil was not fucking around this time. “Fair enough.” And besides, he owed him; Clint was basically asking Phil to go AWOL, and he was pretty sure SHIELD looked down on that sort of behavior.

So, he smiled and held out his hands. “Lucky for us that I’ve saved up a little, then. At least we’ll have funds if you won’t let me burgle rich douchebags.” He held his fingers in a boy scouts’ salute. “I solemnly swear to not shoot people and stuff or whatever you said, and also to not steal more shit.”

Phil sighed. “I severely doubt that you were ever a boy scout, Barton. But close enough. Let’s go.” He flicked on the safety, holstered his gun, and offered a hand instead, clearly meant as a ‘let-us-shake-on-this-like-men’ gesture.

Clint took the offer with a smile but tugged Phil in closer, because if there was a boundary somewhere, Clint was inclined to push it. Phil took a step or two nearer, face wary, and Clint squeezed his fingers reassuringly. “Seal the promise with a kiss, then?” he rumbled. The wariness melted away, replaced with two twin spots of pink high on Phil’s cheekbones. It was the most flustered Clint had ever seen him, and it was friggin’ _adorable_.

“You really…” Phil asked him, and the legitimate disbelief in his voice made Clint sorta want to punch someone. Possibly several someones. Phil swallowed. “Professional interest I understand,” he said, the pink spreading a little higher toward his ears. “I mean, I’m good at what I do, I’m very good, I’m not _delusional_ —”

“And modest,” Clint interjected, but Phil was apparently on a roll, what was probably years of history of dates like that disastrous one Clint had witnessed at the forefront of his mind.

“—but you’re a bit out of my league, and you don’t need to force yourself to do something you wouldn’t want just because I’m helping you. I’ll help you regardless, really, because you’re something _else_ , Clint, you’re _amazing_ , you’re—”

“ _You’re_ amazing,” Clint interrupted, and then leaned in, his intentions very, _very_ clear. His eyes hooded, he licked his lips once, just millimeters from Phil, who had apparently been shocked into silence. “I’m going to kiss you now,” Clint informed him. Phil nodded dumbly, and so Clint did.

“Right,” Phil said, roughly fifteen minutes later. His hair was disheveled, his shirt half unbuttoned, his tie entirely absent, though Clint was fairly sure it was somewhere around their feet. Phil’s ever-present jacket was hanging off just his left elbow, and the pink from before had spread both up and down, leaving his cheekbones and ears tinged something closer to red, and his collarbones (which Clint had lavished with attention all to themselves) were blotchy both with blush and from Clint’s carefully-applied teeth. His lips ( _Jesus, his lips_ ) were swollen and slick.

Clint kissed them again, just because he could.

When he finally pulled away, Phil cleared his throat. “We should go… somewhere…”

“Out of the hot zone,” Clint supplied.

“Yes,” Phil agreed, though he made no move to pull himself back together.

Clint raised his eyebrows, all innocence. “I know a nice hotel in Palma de Mallorca.”

“That’s…” Phil started.

“And I know, hey, cliché, the south of Spain, but they have very large beds,” Clint commented, and walked his fingers up Phil’s chest. “Very comfortable.”

Phil swallowed, and Clint grinned.

~

  ** _Seventeen months later…_**

~

“You know,” Clint began, sliding into the backseat of Phil’s generic sedan and closing the door behind him with a sharp click. Phil watched over his shoulder for a moment as Clint peeled off the facial-rec net and then ruffled his hand over his already-disheveled hair before shooting Phil a grin.

Phil paused his drumming of his fingers on the wheel, but didn’t stop bobbing his head lightly to the beat of the Average White Band’s funk. He smiled back, though, and then turned around, face forward and still scanning idly for any out-of-place movement. Finding none, he glanced into the rearview mirror and found Clint smiling fondly, his head tilted back against the headrest. There was a smear of dirt across the front of his tac vest, but he was otherwise untouched.

“I know what?” Phil asked, because apparently Clint had gone and lost his train of thought.

“You’re ridiculous,” Clint sighed, and shook his head. “Friggin’ getaway car, sounds of the seventies.”

Phil rolled his eyes. At least he didn’t listen to the autotuned crap Clint favored. “Mission accomplished, I assume?” he asked dryly, even though he didn’t actually need to. Of course the mission was accomplished. Well. Not _mission_ , exactly. Hit. But it was easier when he thought of it in SHIELD terms, even if they weren’t official.

“Smooth as butter,” Clint said, closing his eyes and stretching. Phil took a moment to admire the view before he released the clutch and eased away from the curb, signaling from their spot in the alley as he pulled into traffic. Clint yawned. “The guy’s not even dead, just thoroughly incapacitated, and I left him on Hill’s stoop.”

Phil rolled his eyes again, but he wasn’t surprised. Maria lived just a few blocks from here, and every opportunity to deliver a big bad to SHIELD was an opportunity well used, despite the risk of recognition.

He’d relaxed his ‘no larceny’ rule a few months back and let Clint commit B&E to get them their fancy new disguises, and it had been entirely worth it. Much less stressful this way, and it was nice to be able to travel in countries with high CCTV coverage again.

“I’m all peaked,” Clint said maybe ten minutes later as Phil pulled up to their hotel. It was a little seedier than what they’d let themselves get used to, but Clint’s funds were running low, so there wasn’t much for it.

“Well I think I know how to remedy that,” Phil muttered, throwing the car into park and exiting with expedience. Clint followed just as quickly, and gave Phil just enough time to unlock their parking lot-entrance room before he was on him, kicking the door shut behind them and crowding Phil toward the bed.

Phil loved it.

The last year and half had been trying; there was no doubt of that. Phil was cut off from people he’d learned to trust with his life, even if he hadn’t been close to many of them besides Nick. He’d never lived life like Clint had, and while he’d slept rough before, and had been in the army, actual running was a different sort of mentality that took a while to adjust to.

But through it all, he’d at least had Clint. Well, Clint and Clint’s friends, who were likewise unshakable and loyal, wickedly protective, and wonderful. Natasha and Carol and Jessica, Peter and his gang, Kitty and her group of ragtag misfits, Katie-Kate, even Wade-the-Jackass. It was incredible. Phil’d spent years chasing reluctant criminals, outright criminals, psychopaths, kids caught in bad situations, the works, but he’d never even heard of a group like the people Clint had gathered to him.

And Phil was lucky, because—maybe in retrospect—throwing in his lot with a criminal he’d barely known could have been a horrible, _horrible_ mistake, but for once in his life, everything seemed to have fallen into place.

He’d _never_ met anyone like Clint.

Clint, who had unshakable morals, and was kind, and funny, and a smartass, and _smart_.

Clint, who wanted to know every aspect of Phil’s past, present, and future, and who wanted to be his partner through it all.

Clint, who would kill for him, Clint who would stitch him up, Clint who would be his eyes, have his back.

Clint, who loved him.

“Phil,” Clint moaned, fumbling already with zippers and buttons and belts, eager. Phil shushed him and hitched him up on the bed, pinning him, lips dragging down over rippling muscles and body heat-warmed leather. Clint pushed his hips up, beseeching. Phil wasn’t likely to deny him.

They shed their clothes with the ease of practice, already sweating in the warm room. Phil licked a bead of sweat down Clint’s collarbone and followed it with a nip to a pectoral, skimming his fingers down Clint’s stomach and wrapping around them both before guiding them together.

Clint arched his back and spread his legs, wordlessly asking for more, his hand reaching blindly toward the bedside table and the lube they’d thrown there after their usual pre-mission good-luck ritual. Phil beat him to it, snatching it out from underneath Clint’s fingers and slicking his hand.

They didn’t take long for prep; post-mission was always like this, fueled by adrenaline and a job well-done, Clint still needy for Phil’s voice in his ear, Phil’s control. They took on a different tone at other times, of course—Clint was well-versed in breaking Phil apart, too, and several of their nights in Spain and Italy and a half-dozen other points on the map had been earth-shattering for them both. But tonight, in this particular seedy room on the outskirts of DC, Phil knew what Clint needed.

Face to face, Phil pushed in slow, nothing separating them—a recent development, and one they both enjoyed. Clint’s eyes went wide, just like they did every single time, and Phil hitched his elbows under the backs of Clint’s knees. Clint’s fingers wrapped tight around the top of the headboard, his body long and lean and every inch of it Phil’s.

“God you’re beautiful,” Phil murmured. Clint shot him a crooked smile and lifted his hips.

Phil cocked an eyebrow: challenge accepted. He shifted his stance, dropping one of Clint’s legs and pushing the other knee-first up toward Clint’s chest, pressing deep and angling up. Clint gasped and Phil lost no time setting up a steady rhythm, the slick-slide of his cock into the heat of Clint’s body, slowly, inexorably pushing them higher and higher.

He shifted again, using his shoulder to pin Clint’s leg up and thus freeing up both his hands for more useful movement. One danced across Clint’s washboard stomach, up his chest, and the other wrapped loose and slippery around his dick.

Clint jolted at that first touch, a low whine erupting from his throat. Phil flicked a nipple with his other hand, and the whine turned into a moan. Slipped his fingers into Clint’s mouth, and the moan became wide-eyed inaudible panting.

“Don’t you dare,” Phil warned. “You’re going to come in my mouth.”

“Then you can’t _say_ shit like that,” Clint forced out on a wail, dragging his head to the side so Phil’s fingers slipped out and left wet tracks across his cheek. “Phil, _jesus_ , I’m so goddamn close, you gotta—”

Phil pulled both hands back, latching tight to Clint’s hips and lifting him a few inches up, pistoning in and out now, head down, heart racing. Clint’s hands hit grasped uselessly at the sheets and he tensed, purposefully clenching around Phil.

What else was Phil expected to do?

He came, body curling down into a comma over Clint’s chest, sobs torn from his throat, the top of his head burrowed into Clint’s neck.

“PhilPhilPhil,” Clint begged, and Phil snapped to, sliding down, barely wincing when his over-sensitive dick slid from the warmth of Clint’s body. His fingers, three of them, replaced it in an instant, and his mouth was full the heartbeat after.

It was a matter of seconds, just a couple quick bobs of his head and a well-placed bit of suction, and Clint was done, too, one hand buried in Phil’s hair, the other clinging, bringing up bruises on Phil’s shoulder. Phil swallowed what Clint had to give him, his eyes up and fixed on Clint’s beautiful face.

And when those slivers of blue broke open a few seconds later, comedown beginning, Phil rocked his head to the side and rested it on Clint’s pelvis. Clint took a breath.

“I fucking love you, you know that?” Clint said.

Phil sighed. “The feeling is entirely mutual.”

~

A ringing phone woke Clint at—he checked the clock—whatthefuck, three-fucking-thirty-two in the goddamn morning, you have got to be kidding.

“Th’f’k,” he complained, pressing his head tighter against Phil’s broad chest. “Stoppit.”

Phil hummed his agreement, but as usual, was more on the ball. He picked up the receiver of their room phone and listened expectantly, though he didn’t issue any sort of greeting.

“Cheese,” Clint heard, the voice at the other end of the line sounding amused and irritated all in one. He lifted his head and looked at Phil’s face. It was utterly blank, Agent Coulson Special. He still didn’t say a word.

“Got your present,” the voice said. “You think it’s about time we end this?”

Phil broke his silence. “Depends entirely on what you mean by ‘end’, sir. If you plan on touching a hair on Clint’s head, I’m afraid that just won’t work for me.”

Clint smiled, and pressed a lingering kiss to Phil’s neck. When he looked up, Phil was gazing at him, something near-indefinable in his eyes.

The voice apparently had more to say. “I see. Package deal, is it?”

“Take it or leave it,” Phil affirmed.

There was a pause.

“Since it’s clear I know your location,” it said, “I’m going to give you a sign of trust and let you finish your night. But I expect you in the lobby of the Triskelion at nine am, sharp. You’re almost out of vacation time, and it seems I have a new asset to fold into the system.”

Phil let out a breath and slumped back against the headboard. He didn’t say anything, though. He just looked at Clint.

In his eyes, Clint could read everything: every worry and insecurity, every pain and sacrifice, every touch of love and devotion. Every question.

Was this something Clint really wanted? They’d proved they could live like this, a life on the run, calling in favors with Clint’s contacts and hobnobbing with mercs and assassins. They’d been largely happy these past months, despite SHIELD’s specter hanging over their heads.

But Clint was tired of it. He thought back to Natasha’s words in her tiny safe house after she’d broken him free from SHIELD detention. Her resignation, the inevitability of capture—or worse. And he didn’t want that, not for her, not for his friends. Not for himself. Never for Phil.

He nodded once, but Phil’d spent the last year and a half learning every form of silent communication Clint could throw at him. There were other people out there who could use SHIELD’s protective umbrella as badly as they could.

Phil took a breath. “I have a couple conditions, Nick.”

The voice—Nick fucking Fury, apparently—let out a tired laugh. “Of course you do.”

“I need a couple days,” Phil said. “I’ve been busy. I’m not just bringing in Barton.”

Clint smiled.

~

**Author's Note:**

> So this was supposed to be a _short_ , break-the-writer's-block story. See the 20k wordcount and tell me if I was successful. Sigh.


End file.
